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Friday, November 13, 2009

How to find out what mobile network your friend is on

1. Ask them duh!

3. EDIT - Refer to Edit below

2. This question has surfaced the Internet before due to mobile carriers providing free sms or calls to numbers on the same carrier, sometimes you want to know for things like Plumbers, contractors, sellers (from poster ads and notice boards etc.) for whom you don't want to ask because it makes you look stingy and cheap, LOL

The Internet reads that with new mobile numbers it is impossible to tell which provider because numbers are no longer allocated to providers specifically. I am sure there are other methods to find out the provider of a mobile phone but I thought of a method to do it by using another service (not designed to tell you what provider the mobile number belongs to but works to do just that if you know how to)

SOLUTION:

  1. Go to http://www.web2msg.com/
  2. Make sure you go to the web page when all the allocated SMS to all the providers are "currently unavailable", to check this look under the "Current Status" box in the top right side of the web page. You should see all yellow crossed boxes
  3. Now fill in the form on the website and send an SMS to number you want to send to
  4. All providers are unavailable and you will get a message saying that the message was not sent because all the allocated SMS quota to provider XYZABCDEFG Pty. Ltd. are exhausted.
  5. That's how you determine the provider, or one of the ways, or the only way I've come up with so far without asking the person (which is sometimes not possible without calling them first).

EXCEPTION:
  1. If the providers are not all unavailable your message will actually be sent, so try avoid doing this, the SMS sent will be from Web2msg's number and will be considered as spam if you send it. The quota is reset every 12 hours so if you try at the right time, or analyse the website you'll know what time the quota is always exhausted, I will post some AEST times that I have found them to be most dead.


EDIT: (More reliable as method 2. has issues with carriers using other carrier networks and numbers being transferred to new carrier?)

Just found a better, simpler way to do it, good ol Google work.

http://www.smsfun.com.au/mobile_lookup.php

Shows the previous and current provider/carrier, which can be a bit confusing but;

Current provider: provider currently with (free txt or calls goes with them)

Previous provider: the previous carrier of that number (number change over?)

* A limitation of this 3rd method is that you can check up to ~3 numebrs a day without needing to make an account with the website (who has more than 3 numebrs to check anyway?)

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