Posted by tcrhelpforsms 2 days ago
Ask HN: Escape from TCR? Family shared SMS
And as with many things in life, human nature has pretty much ruined it. To combat SMS spam, as far as we can tell, all business SMS usage needs to be approved through https://www.campaignregistry.com/ now. And recent years, it has been brought to our attention that the service we are paying for is really intended for businesses. We are increasingly hitting weird blocks on messaging due to being grandfathered in before TCR. It has gotten to the point where we are on the verge of registering a business just to keep our functionality. Except even just having a registered business may not be enough because TCR requires all kinds of detailed information about your business and its practices.
So we are at a bit of a loss what else to do here. We could concede and one of us gets the responsibility of the "designated" cell phone number to handle everything household related. It is further complicated by my being an Apple fanboi and her a Windows/Android zealot. If we both used Apple devices we could maybe finagle something out by buying a dedicated iPhone for the house number and then take advantage of the cross-device Messages interoperability. There is Google Voice, and even ignoring my dislike for them, I don't feel they can necessarily be trusted not to drop the product or ban us for arbitrary reasons. Additionally, when it comes to actual phone calls, while Google Voice can forward calls to a number, I am not aware of any option to use it directly with regular handsets like many VoIP providers offer.
Are there really no companies in this space serving personal users? If not, that would be an excellent business niche for the entrepreneural folks in the audience.
Also, a dumb phone doesn't really help with the need for SMS and MMS.
Update: I had indeed misunderstood and the proposal was to use a cloned SIM and two phones with dual SIM support. However, as discussed deeper in the thread this still seems to have flaws.
So while that would work for calls, does that also behave as expected for SMS and MMS?
Our mobile networks just recently upgraded from two tin cans and a really long string so I feel like if we support it, it must be pretty close to universal.
AFAIK, being grandfathered in before TCR isn't a thing. The blocking is inconsistent because the enforcement is inconsistent.
TCR enforcement (filtering SMS) is done by carriers who choose to use it on their services.
Primarily, TCR lists are used by wireless carriers, to filter SMS messages before they reach handsets. Primarily, that carrier is T-Mobile.
TCR is mostly a T-Mobile effort and they are it's largest enforcer. I have a T-Mobile number and a VoIP number.
I used to have SMS to my VoIP be forwarded to my T-Mobile - until T-Mobile began dropping 100% of those messages.
I have a dual SIM phone and SMS are now forwarded to my AT&T number. For now, they're arriving. If that stops, I'll have them forwarded to my Google Voice number.
I don't know if AT&T or Verizon currently utilize TCR filtering. They may, somewhat. If not, I'd guess they will but won't fully adopt T-Mobile's model.
It should be noted that VoIP providers are a primary competitor to T-Mobile; I am not at all surprised T-Mobile would single them out. It fits with T-Mobile's other anti-competitive practices - like blocking Google voice calls from handsets (ex:mine).
iPhone has supported dual sim since 13 or sim + eSIM for a very long time. I have absolutely no idea about Android.
It doesn’t fix spam but I’m not convinced humans will ever win that war.
There was some discussion about dual SIM solutions with a cloned SIM in a different thread. But even ignoring the potential for incurring our carrier's wrath, with not all messages will be available to both parties, it doesn't meet the minimal functional requirements.
I don’t see how you could incur a carrier’s wrath. You could spend a few minutes on google and find many carriers talking about it. They get paid.
As for your idea that they will block it, you’ll have to cite some sources for that. I used this for the first time over twenty years ago and had zero problems, and you can still do it now. You’re inventing problems now.
I’m not going to reply anymore because your requirements are extremely unclear and I’m not really here to provide free tech or developer support. This is just a fun place I occasionally contribute to.
If nothing else works, build it yourself. It wouldn’t be too difficult to get something basic built up and you’re good at inventing problems so you might be great at solving them. Have a nice rest of your day and best of luck with your project.
If you see this as inventing problems, then it is clear you don't understand the use case.
Even ignoring the issue of carriers cracking down on SIM cloning, as you've said not all messages will be visible to all participants. So that makes it DOA.
You also clearly do not understand that the issues here are not all technical. Sure I could definitely bang out something using Twilio to send and recieve SMS, etc. Except Twilio requires you to comply with TCR. So again, that is DOA.
Sure if I was really adventurous I could buy tens (hundreds?) of thousands of dollars of telecom equipment and work on then have to negotiate peering with other providers. But you know, I figured I might ask on Hacker News as start.