TM Infoblast is a service provided by Telekom Malaysia (TM) enabling users to send and receive SMS over normal fixed line service. Yes, the normal 03-xxxxxxxx (Klang Valley) or 09-xxxxxxx (Eastern). Some might wonder why would anyone wish to use TM Infoblast while there are a lot of other providers offering the same solution, for example sending from 5-digits number such as 60300 etc?

Okay some benefits that I can think of right now are such as:-

1. It’s easy & FREE to set up an account – yes as easy as filling up some information and you are ready to go. Register here. While it is FREE to register, you still have to pay for sending SMS though 🙂
2. It is cheap at RM0.12/SMS. There are providers in Malaysia offering at lower rate, but they require you to buy in bulk, like thousands of credits.
3. It is postpaid. As long as you are a TM fixed line user, then you are good to go. No need to buy credits. Send SMS now, pay later when the monthly bill is sent 🙂
4. You can receive a reply. Since the sender ID is your own unique phone number, you are able to receive a reply message from other parties. So what can you do with a replies? Get a feel of how your customers think about you, make a survey, know your best promotion package etc.
5. You can mask your number with text ID. For example you may not want to send SMS using your real 03-xxxxxxxx number, just mask it as “THE REAL HERO”, so the SMS receivers will only know this ID. But you will not be receiving any replies if masking is enabled.
6. You can schedule the sending process.
7. You can send audio or simple picture.
8. You can send via web portal or desktop application.

Now let’s move to TM Infoblast API. This article is assuming that you want to send SMS using your existing Infoblast account via PHP. Some of potential use such as:

1. Send notification to clients after a purchase is successfully executed.
2. Sending authentication challenge via SMS.

I am not the author of this TM Infoblast OpenAPI, but credits goes to Muhammad Hamizi Jaminan. This piece of code was written nicely and easy to use. Just download the single file openapi.php, include the file in your code, create a class variable and call some functions.

Example to send SMS:-

// include openapi library
require_once 'openapi.php';

// openapi auth configuration
$config['username'] = 'infoblast_api_username';
$config['password'] = 'infoblast_api_password';

// call openapi class
$openapi = new openapi();
$openapi->initialize($config);

// prepair data
$data['msgtype']   = 'text';
$data['to']        = '0123456789'; //separate by comma for multiple reciepient
$data['message']   = 'this message test from infoblast openapi library';

// send sms to open api
$response = $openapi->send_sms($data);

// print response
print_r($response);

Who might be interested in using Infloblast OpenApi? It suite well for organisations or individuals who would like to touch the customer base in mass using your own unique number as the ID. It is important to use your own ID due to the facts that customers trust your ID, customer can call you right away for further information, or customers can just reply letting you know what they think. So people in the following scenarios might find TM Infoblast is quite beneficial:-

1. Schools – use school general number to send SMS to parents about their children exam result, important announcements or latest news.
2. Hotels – use hotel general number to send latest promotion (like Father’s Day special, Ramadhan promo, CNY promo etc) to the customers.
3. Hospitals – send appointment reminders to the patients, send birthday wishes etc (btw, sending birthday wishes is very important because it is very effective way to get close and getting remembered by your customers).

Can these organisations just send SMS via 5-digits ID service? Sure they can, but there is no feel, no replies and no identities and your messages might only be ignored.

Do you need help setting up a workable SMS sending script using TM Infoblast? Let’s have a chat.