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

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Level 1

8 points

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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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

IdrisSeabright

Level 10

170,957 points

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.

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Answer 2

Jan 10, 2020 8:57 AM in response to Alcott29

SMS is limited to 160 characters. In order to send a text that's longer, you need to have MMS enabled. Do you? Settings>Messages>MMS. If you don't see it as an option, it may not be enabled on your account and you may need to go back to your carrier.

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Answer 3

Jan 11, 2020 7:02 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

Tom Gewecke wrote:

If you send emoji or use "smart punctuation" you can find that texts become larger than expected. See if there is a difference when you avoid that.

Gosh, it's been such a long time since I've had to deal with this that I'd forgotten that!

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Answer 4

Alcott29 Author

Level 1

8 points

Jan 14, 2020 4:53 AM in response to IdrisSeabright

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.

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