Verizon Wireless quietly shuts down SMS delivery confirmations

By on Sep 20, 2008 at 7:50 PM
News September 20, 2008

According to DSL Reports, Verizon Wireless has been quietly ending their SMS delivery confirmations. You know those quick icon changes (letter D or a green checkmark) that occur when your text message has been delivered to your recipient; well, they’re suddenly not working anymore. Discontinuation of the service reportedly started on September 9th on a regional basis and all regions should see the service gone by the end September. According to the word on the forums, the service was stopped in order to reduce network traffic. For every text message sent, Verizon had to send out the text message data to the recipient and then send back the data with the status information to the sender. We suppose don’t believe that 1KB of data being sent back per text message could bog down “The Network”. Rather, we wonder if they are phasing it out so they can offer it as a value add-on to your text messaging plan. You will now be able receive “dynamic” text message delivery status notification for just $1.99/month. Pure speculation here so don’t be spreading rumors that BGR said this or that about some new charges for SMS delivery confirmation. We’re just saying that with the way Verizon Wireless nickle and dimes their customers to death, it would not be outside the realm of speculative possibility.

Disclaimer: I have Verizon Wireless.

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  • BLAH!

    I’m annoyed that they don’t have that delivery confirmation. and it would’ve been nicer if i received a notice from them too. Instead of going crazy, wondering why my phone isn’t working properly!

    It let’s me know who has verizon. (in other words, who not to call!)

    I’d pay the extra $2 for that confirmation. It’ll save me on my minutes. ha!

  • Dippity Doo

    Who cares? Who needs to sit around and look at your phone to see if someone read a text? If they read it, they’ll either respond or they won’t.

    If they didn’t get it, then sitting there looking at the phone won’t help.

    Get a life. Who cares?

  • The Dude

    @Dippity Doo: Please feel more than encouraged to follow your own advice and not waste time posting here about something that doesn’t matter.

  • 8330

    I thought my bb8330 was broken and was almost ready to bring it in to get looked at. good feature i will be sad to see it go but stll the best network…just waiting now on the bb storm, but with the way that release keeps getting postponed i maybe lucky to see it by january

  • TRUTH

    Interestingly enough, delivery confirmation still active in the Puget Sound region…

    …perhaps we’re the last to lose it?

    ???

  • The Dude

    It was supposed to take effect everywhere by the end of the month, although certain parts got it turned off earlier than others.

    However, it seems that VZW actually stopped doing that a few days ago, and now there’s information pointing to VZW going back and actually (re)enabling it all again for everyone everywhere.

  • Jay

    yes, it’s back here in central NJ. i lost it weeks ago and now as of Oct 1st 12am it’s back

  • scott

    mine is working again too southeast PA

  • http://www.vtext.com JNels

    Good news. We heard you – and in response to customer feedback, Verizon Wireless Text Message Delivery Acknowledgement Service has been restored. Thank you for choosing Verizon Wireless.

    JNels – PR Guy, Verizon Wireless

  • Kevin

    As of Oct 1st verizon has reinstated Delivery Confirmation, should be back in all markets soon. Lots of angry customers

  • chris

    yay! me n my daughter love the delivery receipt check mark. we’re glads its back. thx verizon

  • The Dude

    Now, is this back for good, or is it some sort of a temporary thing until VZW figures out how and when to try to get rid of it again?

  • bmclurre

    Not only did they restore it… but they are upgrading it and adding a read reciept in addition to the delivery reciept.

  • Joe

    As of October 1st, the delivery confirmation for verizon Wireless text messages “in network” has been restored due to “customer feedback” according to an email I just received from Verizon!

  • Ben

    This article is completely wrong. The service still exists. In fact, I’ve been getting delivery notifications up to my last text message i sent, oh about 2 hours ago

  • User

    But I just learned that Windows Mobile 6.1+ lacks that feature. Now that sux.

  • Anonymous

    Verizon has 106.3 million subscribers.  The average US subscriber sends 534 messages per month.  This equates to 21600 messages per second.  Making the conservative assumption that each day, traffic probably spikes to be maybe twice the average that it is at night, this means that at peak times, you’re looking at around 43200 messages per second.  Let’s assume for fun that you’re right and a receipt takes up 1 KB.  If everyone used these receipts, then receipts alone would account for 338 Mbps of network traffic.  That’s 33% of a 1 gigabit pipe; it’s significant.  Of course, since SMS messages can only be up to 140 bytes in size, it’s likely that receipts are also smaller in size,  but please think twice before saying “It’s only 1 KB; it’s nothing; how dare they make sensible technical decisions about hardware I know nothing about?!”

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