Frontline SMS is a tool for tethering a phone to a computer to act as a data dispatcher and collector via SMS. There is a lot of nice features provided by this tool, one of which is the ability to easily distribute a java application with a custom form, called Frontline Forms, to phones in the field to assist in data collection. The unfortunate issue with this system is that a tethered gsm phone or modem seems to max out at 8 to 10 messages per minute (sending or recieving).

People are getting around this by using services like clickatel for sending, and a gsm phone/modem for recieving (There is a possibility of connecting more phones to a Frontline SMS server, but we can not realisticaly satisfy the 50 to 1000 simultaneous messages requirement with this). Clickatel was reviewed in the initial design of Tapatio, but was ruled out in favor for Twitter on the backend because it would have cost around $60 per each 1000 message bulk (and it did not give us a simple way to add new numbers like the twitter follow feature). It should be noted that this SMS limiting is set by the GSM protocol at 5 messages per minute. In addition the networks that send and recieve these messages can become congested in certain areas during peak or non-standard usages (concerts, demos, initial onset of natural disaster). TXTMob got around this by using Email to SMS gateways and distibuting smtp gateways via an elaborate java based smtp relays distributed through indymedia websites. The downside of creating an implementation like this now are the more effective measures against spam that are in place.

With this in mind, we will either need to find another free SMS gateway, like twitter, or we will need to figure in the cost of using a SMS gateway in the cost of a deployment.