At work we have a modem-equipped PC that monitors various aspects of our
network and notifies one or more people if it finds something wrong. In the
past, most of the notifications went to people's beepers; but most of us have
switched from beepers to cell phones, so the requirement is now to send an SMS
text message to a cell phone. (Yes, we could send an SMTP message to the
phone's text-messaging email address, but what if our SMTP servers are what's
down?)

The way this works is that the notification software maintains a profile for
each cell phone provider, including such parameters as transmission protocols,
line speed, and, most importantly, the land-line phone number to call to
insert the message into the provider's messaging system. (The user's cell
phone number is part of the message header; the computer doesn't call it
directly.) Most of our cell phones are Verizon, and the necessary phone number
is posted on the VZW Web site. (It isn't easy to find, being buried in an
obscure FAQ list, but it's there.) But one or two of the message recipients
have Cingular phones, and I haven't been able to find a corresponding number
for Cingular. Can someone tell me how to find it? If it's region-specific, I
need the one for the Boston area.

For that matter, is it even possible to inject a text message into the
Cingular system? At first glance, Cingular appears a bit more hostile to
outsiders than Verizon is. I notice that Cingular won't let you send text
messages to their subscribers from their Web site, while Verizon makes that
easy to do.

Bob