Provider Property  
 

Gets and sets the name of the preferred wireless service provider.

Syntax

object.Provider [= value ]

Remarks

The Provider property returns the preferred wireless service provider associated with the current phone number. Changing the value of this property will change the preferred wireless service provider. If this property is an empty string, the default provider assigned to the recipient's phone number will be used. This property is only used with messages sent using SMTP and is ignored for other message services.

In the United States and Canada, most wireless common carriers are required to provide wireless number portability (WNP) which allows a customer to continue to use their current phone number even if they switch to another service provider. This can result in a situation where a specific phone number is shown as allocated to one provider, but in actuality that user has switched to a different provider. For example, a user may have originally purchased a phone and service with AT&T and then later switched to Verizon, but decided to keep their phone number. In this case, if Verizon was not specified as the preferred provider, the library would attempt to send the message to the AT&T gateway, since that was the original provider who allocated the phone number.

For most applications, the correct way to handle the situation in which a user may have switched to a different service provider is to allow them to select a preferred provider in your user interface. For example, you could display a drop-down list of available providers for them to select from, populated using the ProviderName property array. If they select a preferred provider, then you would assign that value to this property. If they choose to use the default provider, set this property to an empty string.

Data Type

String

See Also

ProviderCount Property, ProviderName Property, GetAddress Method, GetProvider Method