Hi everyone,
I’m stuck in a loop between two telecom providers, and I need some technical insight to break the stalemate. Support agents are just reading scripts at this point.
The Issue: Several bosnian numbers (provider: BH Telecom) cannot send me (in Switzerland, provider: Sunrise) SMS messages. They never arrive. However:
- SMS from me to them works fine.
- Voice calls in both directions work fine.
Technical Specs & Logs:
- Sender Side (BH Telecom): Their logs show the SMS status as "FAILED" with "Error 13 - Call Barred".
- Receiver Side (Sunrise): They have confirmed in writing that there are no active bars (Incoming Call/SMS Barring) on my line.
- The Devices: I am using a Google Pixel 10; previously, I had a Samsung. The problem persisted across both devices, so it's not a handset setting (Spam filters/Blacklists have been cleared).
- The Mystery: Sunrise claims they don't even see an incoming delivery attempt in their logs. This suggests the SMS is "dying" before it even reaches the Swiss network.
My Hypothesis: Since BH Telecom sees a "Call Barred" error, but Sunrise hasn't set one, there must be a signaling error at the Interconnect/SMS Hub level or a Routing issue. It seems the Bosnian SMSC is receiving a false "Barred" trigger (perhaps during the SRI_SM lookup) and dropping the message.
Questions for the experts:
- Has anyone encountered Error 13 (Call Barred) specifically in international SMS signaling?
- What specific technical terms should I use to force the Bosnian provider to escalate this to their Level 3 / Network Engineers?
- Could this be an issue with the HLR/VLR records not updating correctly between these specific roaming partners?
I've already tried the usual (restarting, resetting network settings, testing in different phones). Any advice on how to get the engineers to actually look at the signaling traces?
Thanks in advance!