Clarifying/Clickatell Questions

[Dounia Bredes]

Hello! 

I'm updating a school linking program that connects schools (and students and teachers) here in the United States with schools in Ghana and Cameroon. 

I've been in communication with Clickatell to figure out whether it makes sense to work through them, but there's a lot that they can't answer for me.

So, here's the deal:

1. Since I am running this program from my office in the United States, access to the Internet isn't an issue, so I don't think that I need to purchase a modem. Right?
2. I want teachers in Ghana and teachers in the U.S. to be able to text one another, but I need to be able to monitor those messages. I can set up auto-forwarding on FrontlineSMS to allow for that, correct?
3. I don't want it to be expensive for teachers in Ghana to text teachers in the U.S. However, if I use Clickatell, I would get one of their 2-way numbers for the U.S. The US students and teachers would text into this number (text GHANASCHOOL1 to 55555). This message would come into Clickatell's system and they would push it to Frontline. Frontline would then take the message and send it out (via one of Clickatell's international long numbers that covers Ghana) to the end user in Ghana. In short, I would need to purchase one of Clicktall's US long numbers and a +41 long number to cover the 4 networks in Ghana that Clickatell covers: MTN (ScanCom), Tigo (Millicom), Vodafone (GTC), or Airtel (Zain). Would they have to pay a premium to text or receive texts from long numbers?

Any advice is appreciated. Thanks for your help!

Dounia

[Dounia Bredes]

Sila,

Thanks so much for your quick response!

So, just to confirm: I do need to purchase a modem in order to use the Frontline SMS software. In other words, I can't use the Internet alone to use the software and do what I want to do. Correct?

And how can I download V1? I seem to have V2.

Thanks again--I really appreciate it!

[Dounia Bredes]

Right. I know I don't need the Internet, but can I use the Internet instead of purchasing a modem? Or do I absolutely have to purchase a modem?

Thanks again--so sorry for all the questions.

[Dounia Bredes]

Yes. Thank you!

Dounia