[enewcomer]

Hey Josh,

One of the devs here..

There's several different ways your TextIt app can be deployed depending on where you are located. When you sign up, we present the geographically appropriate options for you. In some cases you will see Twilio, others you will get direct connections with a carrier.

However, no matter where you are we also have a pretty robust Android app (free on Google Play) that can facilitate 2-way SMS anywhere in the world.

[josh2600]

Awesome! Thank you so much :).

Can you tell me a bit about what your experience setting up the direct connections was like? Frankly, I do this for a living and I'm curious what it's like for others. Dealing with global carriers is hit or miss for me. It's either BOOM DONE or years of waiting in vain.

What was your experience like? I admit, most of my conversations are focused on Europe and Asia so I'd be quite curious about your experiences in Africa or elsewhere.

Thanks!!!

Edit: To clarify, where are you unable to get carrier agreements?

[nicpottier]

No you can get carrier agreements, and we have in Rwanda, but that's not a business model we particularly want to go after. We've had the same experience as your own, sometimes it is really quick, other times it takes forever or just isn't possible. But there are plenty of aggregators out there trying to expand and cover all the markets, and in time they will get to Rwanda and the rest of Africa I'm sure.

So we are focused more on providing a platform that lets you build the app, and using the (rather effective) stop gap of an Android phone to bridge until the day we can use Twilio right here in Kigali.

[josh2600]

Thanks for the reply.

One word of caution: not all aggregators are equal. I've had experiences where aggregators had their master aggregator change their rate to a particular destination and that aggregator then had to 3x their rates to our client. Not fun.

Telecom is a pretty messy world :/. Again, thanks for sharing, I really appreciate your time!