Our 3G/4G SMS gateway is still running. Here is what we'd change in 2026.
Our 2023 SMS gateway product note is migrating to /services/. The hardware estate has aged. The cellular generation has not. Here's the honest 2026 update.
Our industrial-grade SMS gateway — 8-to-32 channel modem pools, JSON HTTP API, encrypted contact storage, private deployment — has been in production for SG enterprise clients since around 2018. The 2023 article (Team-Notes #76) listed the spec sheet. The product is still alive. A few real things have changed.
What still works
- Local hardware in the customer’s data centre. For clients who want zero third-party exposure of mobile numbers, this is still the cleanest answer. We deploy and they own it.
- HTTP API + JSON. Legacy systems integrate easily. ERP / quotation / appointment-reminder systems we build still call this gateway.
- Auto-extract numbers from text + duplicate removal. Boring. Useful. Has not aged.
What needs updating
1. 3G is gone, 4G is fading
The 2023 article was written when 3G was already being deprecated by SG operators. By 2026, 3G is fully decommissioned. The hardware that supported 3G fallback is now scrap. New deployments are 4G-only on hardware that will receive 5G modules in 2026–2027.
If you are reading this and you have a 3G/4G modem pool that hasn’t been touched since 2022: please check it. It may be silently failing on the 3G half.
2. Two-way SMS regulation has tightened
IMDA’s tightening of unsolicited-SMS rules and the move to authenticated SenderIDs has changed what’s possible from a programmable gateway. We now require:
- A registered SenderID for any outbound campaign.
- Explicit opt-in records, kept per recipient.
- An auto-honour for STOP / unsubscribe at the gateway level (this was already in our product; we now treat it as non-optional).
3. WhatsApp and RCS are mostly the better default
For most customer-communications use cases — appointment reminders, OTP, transactional notifications — WhatsApp Business API or RCS is the better default in 2026. SMS is the fallback lane.
We integrate WhatsApp for clients that want it. The SMS gateway sits behind WhatsApp as the fall-through for recipients without WhatsApp or for jurisdictions where WhatsApp doesn’t cover.
4. The agent-era footnote
A few clients have asked whether an agent should write the SMS body. Generally: no. SMS is 160 characters, and most use cases are templated. Where the agent helps is the one upstream step — picking the right template based on a customer’s account context. The body itself stays templated for compliance and audit reasons.
Where the product page lives now
The full feature spec moves to /services/ under “Secured SMS Gateway.” This blog post is the studio note that comes with the migration.
What we cut from the original
- The full feature catalogue. On the services page.
- Any framing that suggested SMS is the right default in 2026. It is the fallback default.
What carries over unchanged
The gateway. Still running. Still on a private rack at multiple SG enterprise clients, doing exactly what it was deployed to do.
— wGrow studio · migrated from Team-Notes #76