[contingencies]

I've used both raw devices and 2 or 3 commercial SMS APIs to implement international SMS systems commercialy over the last 10 years: Middle East, Iran, Europe, East Asia, etc. IMHO the best are the ones that let you send raw SMS PDUs, which isn't that hard. If you want to do international SMS, and care about cost, then using non UCS2 encodings is a requirement. Without raw SMS PDU support, you are basically screwed. Swedish 42IT AB[0] was a good one though their capacity for and speed of detection of route failure was definitely not ideal. I've never needed inbound but did set it up with raw devices back in about 2005 and it worked fine. One technique few people use which I think is great is forwarding your service business' phone number to people as an SMS contact when people sign up to your website. This stuff is becoming a lost art.

[0] http://fortytwotele.com/