Issue
How to prevent the Niagara R2 UNC station from sending multiple messages when emailing an alarm to a Cell Phone.
Environment
I/A Series R2 station
Cause
If a message sent to a cell phone as a text message exceeds a specific number of characters, the receiving phone will usually split the message into more than one part. These message segments may not always be delivered in sequential order.
Resolution
Limit the number of fields defined to be transmitted in the alarm message. This field information is configured in the properties of the MailRecipient object. Remember that each selected field will appear in the message on a separate line.
An alarm message sent as an e-mail message includes the Subject property, address properties (To, From & CC) and selected formatted alarm data fields. The message is formatted by the cell phone service provider based on their message delivery protocol.
The exact e-mail delivery technique varies from one cell phone service provider to another.
For example, the service providers US Cellular, ATT/Cingular or Sprint, deliver e-mail messages as a series of SMS (Short Message System) messages. The limit for each SMS message is 160 single-byte characters. To format the message into SMS format, the carrier breaks the message into 160 byte chunks and delivers these chunks as a series separate messages to the recipient's cell phone.
Some cell phone service providers use MMS messaging (Multimedia Message Service) to transmit e-mail messages to users subscribed to this feature. With MMS, the e-mail message is typically received as a single message, however, only the message header (To, From and Subject) will be delivered to the phone until the user attempts to read the message. When the user opens a message in this format, the cell phone uses WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) to retrieve the message from the service provider and display the entire message. Note that to read the entire message, the user must have access to his carrier's network at the time he is attempting to read the message.
UPDATE:
US Cellular has announced that in selected service areas, they will offer a new service on specific phones that will allow sending and receiving HTML (text) based e-mail messages without the 160 character limitation.
