Possible to receive SMS via email?

[idfer]

Hi all,

I'd like to have people send text messages to a specific number and somehow forward these messages to an email address or directly to the server, anything that an application can read and decode easily. This is for a voting system like in all the tv shows that are the rave right now, but in a smaller scale. It would be for a non-profit org in Canada, so cost is also a big factor.

Is this possible? Can it be done with a regular cellphone number or do i need to setup something special with the cell provider? So far all i've found is Google Voice but it's only available in the States, and some other stuff in the UK. Do Canadian cell providers charge extra for sending text to non-local numbers? (sorry, i'm a newbie when it comes to texting.)

Thanks for any insight on this.

[driverseven]

I don't know about Canada but in the US, you can hire people to do this. They own blocks of SMS numbers and have applications that process them for quizzes or data collection or data response.

I had talked to iLoop about doing something in this field. They are one of the quality providers. Do a search on SMS marketing or SMS polling and you've find others.

[idfer]

Nice thanks, it's always useful to know the right keywords to search for. It doesn't look like there's much available in Canada, which is to be expected, but at least now i know what to look for.