I was trying to set up server monitoring to send a text message to my cell phone when my server goes down. Since I’m on fido I first tried 0123456789@fido.ca (replace 0123456789 with my phone number), but found this to be terribly inconsistent. Sometimes I received the messages, but usually I didn’t. It didn’t seem to matter how long the messages were. This would not work.

So, since Fido is actually rogers now, I tried 0123456789@pcs.rogers.com, and found that this is very consistent. At first it prompted me to subscribe to the rogers email to sms service. Once I did that I was able to receive email. When an email comes in it tells me who it’s from. If I want to read it I reply back with the text “read”. Then it sends me the message.

This will work fine for now.

(Update an hour later some of the messages I sent to …@fido.ca are starting to trickle into my phone in no particular order….. obviously xxx@fido.ca is not a reliable way to send text messages to fido phones).