What does Delivered to the Network mean?

This is an intermediate message status where the message has been sent to, and accepted by, the phone’s operator (i.e. Vodafone, O2 etc.). However the message cannot be delivered at present as the handset is temporarily unreachable. As part of the delivery process, it will have been determined that the phone number is valid. However the message cannot be delivered at the time that it is initially sent to the handset.

Typical causes of the handset being temporarily unreachable are that the phone is switched off, out of service or the memory capacity of the handset has been exceeded.

A message that is sent to a legitimate and live number, and not successfully delivered with its first attempt, is placed in a retry queue by the delivering network and retried on a regular basis, until the expiration period for that message is reached. The default expiration period (known as the message’s Validity) for a message is 24 hours. However, within both TextOnline and TextCampaign the message sender can set the expiration period for each message to between 1 and 72 hours.

Please contact our Customer Service team on 08451 221 302 if you require more information.

If the phone is switched back on, or comes back in to service during the expiration period, the message will be delivered shortly after the phone becomes re-attached to its network.

This intermediate message status is generally only seen during the expiration period of the message. Once the expiration period has been exceeded a final message status should be returned, confirming that either the message was successfully delivered, or failed to be delivered.

However, please note that this intermediate message status can also become a final message status with some network operators. This can also be the case at peak times for the network operators where the focus is on delivering the messages, with delivery receipts being omitted.