[ale] phone notifications for homebrew automation

[jc.lightner at comcast.net]

Yet another reason to dislike AT&T.  Maybe there were good reasons to do this but doing it without notice stinks.  

I don't think I ever got email to text.

At a former employer we relied heavily on email to text both for our Nagios monitoring alerts AND for text notifications to thousands of customers.   It was a lot cheaper than using something like Telalert which an even earlier employer had used for monitoring alerts.

Once at the later job AT&T suddenly blocked email from us due to the number of texts we sent to customers via our email server.   They took the position we should pay them for access due to our volume.  That wasn't an unreasonable requirement but again they did it without notice to us, they simply began rejecting all our email whether it was to text or just regular email accounts.   Trying to find out WHY they were rejecting us was, like most things with Awful Telephone & Telegraph, was exasperating. 

I have to laugh at the recent ads for AT&T where they claim to be the original phone company.   While the name is theirs they are not the monopoly that was mercifully broken up in the 80s.   In fact the Terminator 2 reassembled pieces of AT&T got the name because they brought the last 2 vestiges of AT&T that had the name back in with a couple of mergers.

-----Original Message-----
From: Ale <ale-bounces at ale.org> On Behalf Of Calvin Harrigan via Ale
Sent: Sunday, November 9, 2025 7:03 AM
To: ale at ale.org
Cc: Calvin Harrigan <calvin.harrigan at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [ale] phone notifications for homebrew automation

On 11/9/2025 3:03 AM, Alex Carver via Ale wrote:
> Where did you hear that email gateways are going away?
>
> On 2025-11-07 03:40, Calvin Harrigan via Ale wrote:
>> I believe you can send texts via email (via a EMG) on most phone 
>> systems.
>> Just followed up, seems that this feature is going away this year or 
>> has already gone.
>> Shame. They claimed it was a spam magnet, but I've never gotten a 
>> spam via email to text.
>> I'm guessing they wanted to mothball the infrastructure.
>>
>>
>> On 11/6/2025 8:58 PM, Pete Hardie via Ale wrote:
>>> Anyone know of a system/tool that will send notifications to a phone 
>>> with low latency for such things as DIY/non-monopolistic home 
>>> automation?  Mainly for alerts when doorbell/security cam detection, 
>>> or flooding alerts
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Pete Hardie
>>> --------
>>> Better Living Through Bitmaps
>>>
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>>
>>
>> --
>> Calvin Harrigan
>>
>>
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https://www.androidauthority.com/atnt-email-to-text-feature-shutdown-3539223/

https://www.att.com/support/article/wireless/KM1061254%20/


--
Calvin Harrigan

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