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Why does my carrier see my texts as broken up into several small ones (<160 characters)?

I have an iPhone 5s on a prepaid plan (iOS is updated). I’m not much of a tech user obviously. I discovered that my outgoing texts are appearing to my carrier as several smaller ones. So I’m paying for multiple texts. For example, I sent a text of 306 characters that I thought would count as two texts. It showed up as 5 texts to my carrier, though it arrived as one complete message to the person who received it. The carrier says this is the fault of my phone software. Does anyone know how to fix this? Thank you.

iPhone 5s

Posted on Jan 10, 2020 8:46 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jan 14, 2020 6:28 AM

Alcott29 wrote:

Thank you. Yes, MMS is enabled. The texts arrive complete to the recipient, only the carrier sees them as split up. I sent a 138-character text that was charged as 3 separate texts, and a 108-character one that counted as only one text (no emojis in either), so I can’t figure it out.

If only the carrier is seeing them as split, then it's an issue you're going to need to resolve with the carrier. It sounds as if they bill for SMS messages in 160-character blocks. That may just be their policy.

6 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jan 14, 2020 6:28 AM in response to Alcott29

Alcott29 wrote:

Thank you. Yes, MMS is enabled. The texts arrive complete to the recipient, only the carrier sees them as split up. I sent a 138-character text that was charged as 3 separate texts, and a 108-character one that counted as only one text (no emojis in either), so I can’t figure it out.

If only the carrier is seeing them as split, then it's an issue you're going to need to resolve with the carrier. It sounds as if they bill for SMS messages in 160-character blocks. That may just be their policy.

Why does my carrier see my texts as broken up into several small ones (<160 characters)?

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