Hi everyone,
Has anyone dealt with the SMPP binary SMS protocol? I know this technology is still fairly widely used by the messaging aggregators and carriers, but it seems like the SMPP spec is not being updated, and support for SMPP libraries is slowly fading away. The "SMS Forum" (http://www.smsforum.net) was shut down in 2007.
To me, it feels like the protocol is dying in favor of web-service interfaces, but I was curious what other people think.
We also still use it but we are repacing it with HTTP protocol for new projects!
Since SMPP is used mainly by wireless operators, the answer to your question will depend a lot on what market/region/country you are dealing with.
I have experience with Latin American wireless companies, and can tell you that although more and more companies are hiding their SMPP servers behing HTTP webservices (that provide them more flexibility) the SMPP protocol is still a requirement to connect to a lot of Wireless companies, so it's definitely not dead.
And if you look inside those Wireless companies, the smpp protocol is very much alive in their internal networks and in the inter-connections with other carriers.
It's true that the SMPP spec hasn't changed in a long time, but that's not a bad thing actually. The protocol has matured, and there seems to be no interest from the carriers in expanding it to include new functionality, specially because they have found the flexibility they need in custom HTTP APIs
And regarding library implementations of SMPP, Kannel is in active development, although I wouldn't recommend it's use. Unfortunately most of the successful long-term implementations that I have seen of SMPP clients have been home grown implementations
Although many SMS agregattors have HTTP APIs. I think SMPP is very useful when you want to do massive sendings, because it is a connected protocol.
SMPP is a good protocol for simple message sending. I hope it doesn't die in favour of any HTTP-based protocols. I agree that the HTTP protocols would provide flexibility, however, it would likely mean a fat payload based on some variant of XML or some other text protocol, which would affect greatly performance/power-usage.
As long as SMPP is guided by the specs, it should be great to use.