Sinch Community

Variant of the WiFi standard providing extended range for low power communication at a lower data rate.

Term used in reference to a mobile phone, mobile device, or mobile terminal.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was created to establish a national standard to govern the handling of Protected Health Information (PHI). For more information on HIPAA and PHI, as well as how you can ensure compliance, take a look at our HIPAA page.

A Home Location Register (HLR) is the central database containing details of each mobile phone subscriber authorized to use the GSM core network. Each mobile network has one HLR, although there may be many HLR servers creating a single virtual HLR. A HLR stores details of every SIM card issued by the mobile phone operator. Each SIM has a unique identifier called an IMSI which is one of the primary keys to each HLR record. A HLR stores the following data about a mobile subscriber: Current servicing MSC status of the subscriber Temporary handset error code if applicable Status – valid/invalid If the subscriber is available to receive SMS If there is an error code preventing SMS delivery If the number has been ported to another mobile network.

A lookup operation that retrieves information about an end user from the mobile operator's HLR.

Hash-based message authentication.    A type of signature validation used for callbacks and webhooks.

SMS home routing is when a change made to the original GSM specification. The home routing enables mobile networks to offer a complete range of advanced services for both inbound and outbound SMS. This change provides functionality to mobile phone users and enables mobile operators an opportunity to generate additional revenue. It uses the Home Location Register (HLR) to change the flow of inbound off-net messages (messages that are not originating on the home network), directing them to an SMS router, rather than straight to target handsets. There, advanced services such as divert, copy, archiving and anti-spam can be applied before messages are delivered.

For every entity (and associated store and forward machine) a message touched in its path to delivery is regarded as a hop. The count starts when an enterprise submits a message to a network and stops when the message reaches the final terminating operator SMSC. An example of a single hop: Acme Inc. sends a message to an AT&T subscriber via the Sinch network, then Sinch sends the message to AT&T for on-net delivery. An example of a multi hop: Acme Inc. needs to send a message to an AT&T subscriber, but has to use an intermediary service, like SMSAGG Inc. SMSAGG sends the message to Sinch for delivery, which would be two hops. If Sinch uses its own SMSC for delivery, then this would be a zero-hop connection. In general, the less hops the better, as each hop takes time and can potentially have latency and security vulnerabilities.

Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser.

Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is the foundation of data communication over the internet and defines the set of rules for exchanging files (text, graphic images, sound, video, and other multimedia files) on the World Wide Web.

A secure version of HTTP which encrypts data. 

An SMS hub usually implies P2P messaging, and is used by mobile operators to send messages to operators they do not have reach to via SS7. The advantage of using a hub is that it reduces the number of commercial agreements a mobile operator needs to maintain, but it is not the highest quality route since the hub adds another hop in the delivery chain and may not report back actual delivery notifications. Sending A2P messages via an SMS hub is usually frowned upon and not permitted by most mobile operators.