WEB GATEWAY MULTI-CARRIER SUPPORT

The present invention provides multi-carrier support in a wireless Internet gateway (WIG) that allows the WIG to send messages to any number of ‘peer’ gateways on the Internet in a conveniently reconfigurable manner. The disclosed embodiments include a ‘Message Distribution Center’ (MDC), through which short messages can be routed to the gateways of other wireless carriers based on carrier formats stored in an abstracted carrier format table. The conventional technique of separate classes written for each carrier is replaced by entries in a look-up table format, to provide a more easily adaptable wireless gateway. Thus, occasional updates of the carrier format table need only be updated, rather than the wireless Internet gateway program, reducing down time for updates, reducing the complexity of updates, and improving the reliability of a wireless Internet gateway in the face of changes for one or more carriers in a wireless network. The present invention enables a WIG to communicate with the gateways of other carriers (particularly other wireless carriers) having different and occasionally changing kinds of message destinations using different and occasionally changing protocols. Information regarding other carriers (i.e., destinations) may be added, changed, and/or removed from a wireless short messaging system network by simply modifying a configuration property file relating to message formats for each other carrier, rather than the conventional technique of providing each carrier with its own class, avoiding the conventional need to reprogram relevant sending gateways.