Billing
SMS destination bands and segments
How carrier segments, destination bands, and route availability determine SMS credit cost.
WarnFire charges SMS credits per carrier-billed segment, not merely per send. The destination band determines the credits per segment; the message encoding determines how many segments are sent.
Segment sizes
Every SMS segment carries 140 bytes. GSM-7 text fits 160 characters in one segment and 153 characters in each segment of a concatenated message. Characters from the GSM extension table consume two character units. Unicode text uses UCS-2: 70 UTF-16 units in one segment and 67 per concatenated segment. Emoji usually consume two UTF-16 units.
The Usage page reports the encoding, message count, segment count, destination band, and total credits. It does not copy destination phone numbers into the aggregate report.
Destination-band examples
| Band | Example destinations | Credits per segment |
|---|---|---|
| Domestic | United States | 1 |
| International low | Canada | 2 |
| International standard | United Kingdom, Australia | 3 |
| International high | India, Ireland | 6 |
| International premium | United Arab Emirates, South Africa | 12 |
| International restricted | Afghanistan | 24 |
| Prohibited | Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria | blocked |
The table is a reference, not a complete list of every destination WarnFire may support. The current destination list and credit weights shown in the workspace console are authoritative.
WarnFire blocks a destination that is not currently priced or has no available
route. Non-US/Canada NANP destinations can be blocked even though they share the
+1 country code. A blocked or unpriced destination does not consume credits;
Delivery Activity records the failed attempt and reason.
Regional limitations
Country-code controls cannot identify every sanctioned region or recipient. A destination shown as blocked cannot be enabled from a workspace. Contact WarnFire support before relying on SMS delivery to a destination that is not listed in the current console reference.
Route availability
WarnFire selects an available route for the destination before sending. If no current route is available, it fails the attempt instead of silently choosing an unpriced path.
Failover occurs only when a provider explicitly rejects a request before accepting it. An ambiguous timeout does not trigger a second-provider send because the first provider may already have transmitted the message. Incident delivery history records the provider, encoding, segment count, destination band, and credits charged.
Example
A 161-character GSM-7 message to the United Kingdom is two segments. The standard band costs 3 credits per segment, so the message costs 6 SMS credits.