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SDF@lemmy.sdf.org

I waste nearly 1000 SMS msgs per month in Belgium - what can I do with them? (self.phones)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by activistPnk to c/phones@lemmy.sdf.org

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My phone carrier gives me a use-it-or-lose-it monthly allowance of 1000 #SMS txts within #Belgium. I only use ~50 or so. Any ideas on how I can use them and be less wasteful?

I’m not really looking for a big project. Just numbers that give free services. E.g. there are probably numbers I can SMS and get back the weather. Or even better, I would love to be able to SMS a Belgian phone number that would forward my SMS to an international number. Not sure if gateways like that exist.

If I were looking for a project, I could probably sell a SMS service. So for example I could proxy SMS messages for people outside of Belgium for a fee. It would be interesting but more effort than I want.

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[–] wesker@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It might be technically more wasteful, to try to fill the quota just because.

[–] activistPnk 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

That’s not the point. It’s to exploit missed opportunities; not to fill a quota. If there were a weather service, for example, I have no interest in asking for the weather 950 times and flooding my inbox.

For a bit more context, it’s packaged with data which always runs out before the end of the month & sometimes I have a bit of downtime before buying more data. So the downtime could perhaps be less annoying if SMS can give some connection to the world (apart from the obvious use).

The phone carrier itself has a somewhat sophisticated service with cascading menus all implemented in SMS, which then provides information about your account, options, and gives ways to place orders. So in principle anyone could implement that sort of thing. But the 2000s are over so maybe SMS has retracted back to just rare simple uses like buying bus fare.