Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

SMS from Saudi Arabia to USA?

E

Edd.Dantes

Suspended
Original poster
Dec 5, 2007
365
163
My friend in Saudi Arabia can receive my SMS messages but cannot reply to them.

She has tried iMessage and just regular SMS and she can only receive from me...

She has an iPhone 5 and I have a 5s.

I have tried soooo many different things and so has she.

I am stumped :(

Can anyone help?
 
are there any government restrictions or filtering there regarding outgoing messages to foreign countries?

for SMS i can see a number of issues, mostly carrier related. however, imessages should work with no issues. it wont even work through wifi? how are you sending it? phone number or email address?

from what i read, alot of things are censored and all internet communications are fed through government server farms. but i cant see imessages being filtered.
 
dictoresno,

You touched on everything I thought as well. I researched many things, yet I'm still stumped.

She sends messages outside of the Kingdom to other friends with no problem.

We have both cell numbers and e-mail addresses... so I have no idea why imessage isn't working either. Not much of a way to restrict that.

I did read an old tweet and some old articles about KSA not allowing iMessage but that was in 2011. From what I understand, it works now.

https://twitter.com/AbduIaziz/status/124236100804947968

She has tried my number with 01 and 001, plus area code and number.

It's just weird that she can receive my SMS messages but not send. As much as I hate to say it... It sounds like a government filtering issue but that still doesn't explain iMessage not working.

Maybe someone can treat me like a child and walk me through what we may be doing wrong here.

Thanks again.
 
Edd.Dantes said:
dictoresno,

You touched on everything I thought as well. I researched many things, yet I'm still stumped.

She sends messages outside of the Kingdom to other friends with no problem.

We have both cell numbers and e-mail addresses... so I have no idea why imessage isn't working either. Not much of a way to restrict that.

I did read an old tweet and some old articles about KSA not allowing iMessage but that was in 2011. From what I understand, it works now.

https://twitter.com/AbduIaziz/status/124236100804947968


She has tried my number with 01 and 001, plus area code and number.

It's just weird that she can receive my SMS messages but not send. As much as I hate to say it... It sounds like a government filtering issue but that still doesn't explain iMessage not working.

Maybe someone can treat me like a child and walk me through what we may be doing wrong here.

Thanks again.
Click to expand...

Any idea which carrier she is using? if you want to test it PM me your number and I will text you and see if it works. There shouldn't be any restriction on SMS that I know of. Plus, iMessage works in Saudi it is just facetime that is disabled in all MiddleEast version of the phone. So if you have US iPhone over here facetime would work.
 
as far as i have seen/heard, government censorship is more about blocking outbound traffic and requests. they dont want their people viewing outside websites. i know saudi arabia did block BBM traffic on blackberry phones a few years ago, however lifted this ban once RIM agreed to install a separate, secure BBM server of their own which allowed them to review data.

which carrier does she use? i have a feeling outbound internet traffic being sent to US or non saudi apple servers is probably being blocked.

on a side note, my friend who is persian, i think has trouble sending text messages to girls he knows in iran as they are possibly watched. they are forced to resort to yahoo messenger and using proxy websites, due to censorship regulations there.
 
Maybe get her to switch to a google voice number just for texting and see if that works. She can create a local US number and try that.
 
Have you ever ported your number between networks? I've seen this with international texts occasionally, where the carrier in another country did not receive or process notifications of ported numbers and continued to route SMS to the old carrier, who just discarded it. In my case it never got resolved until I moved my number to a different network again, then it started working, but Viber, WhatsApp and iMessage are much better than SMS anyway so it wasn't a big deal.
 
Just to clear things up, it seems the problem is with here specfic carrier. I sent to SMS messages one from "STC" other from "Mobily". Mobily one was recieved my guess is that STC has some sort of issue or they don't have an Agreement with the US carrier which could happen sometimes.
 
I had problems sending out messages from the Kingdom when I worked there. It seemed to be resolved if I added "+" to the front of the number. Seems that it doesn't work with just the 01, you need "+01". This was a few years ago, not sure if its still the same.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back