── Telecom Lab ──

Building real systems on
programmable infrastructure.

I build on the 46elks API — SMS, Voice, and phone numbers as engineering primitives. Documented as I go.

→ Read the experiments Try the live demo

── Principle ──

Communication is infrastructure, not a feature.

Most systems treat SMS and voice as afterthoughts — a notification bolted on at the end of the stack, routed through a managed platform nobody fully understands.

That framing is wrong. When a server goes down at 3am, email won't wake you. When a call needs routing, a SaaS platform adds a layer you don't control. When your system needs to speak, it should speak directly — through an API you own.

46elks exposes telephony as a clean REST interface. No platform lock-in. No managed abstractions hiding the protocol. Just HTTP, basic auth, and a phone network. These experiments document what you can build on top of it.

── Built on ──

SMS API

Alerts, OTPs, notifications

Single POST request. No SDK. Delivers to any number, globally.

Voice API

IVR systems, call flows

Webhook-driven call logic. TTS, keypress routing, call transfers.

Numbers

Dynamic routing, on-call

Provision and configure numbers via API. Route by schedule or rule.

── Featured Experiment ──

#001
SMS Monitoring Node.js
Jan 2026

SMS-Based Server Downtime Alert System

A 3am outage. Email doesn't wake you. PagerDuty adds a managed layer I don't want. The question: can a direct 46elks SMS call — triggered by a dead health check — close that gap reliably, with no platform in between? 

// The entire alert leg. No SDK. No wrapper.
const body = new URLSearchParams({
  from:    'Monitor',
  to:      process.env.ALERT_PHONE,
  message: `[DOWN] ${CONFIG.targetUrl} unreachable. ${ts}`,
}).toString();

await fetch('https://api.46elks.com/a1/sms', {
  method:  'POST',
  headers: { 'Authorization': `Basic ${b64Credentials}`,
              'Content-Type':  'application/x-www-form-urlencoded' },
  body,
});
// → { "id": "s8e3a6f0...", "status": "created" }
Result: 92s worst-case detection to delivery. Zero false positives over 14 days. Read experiment →

── Live Demo ──

Enter your phone number. A real SMS gets delivered via a single POST to the 46elks API — no platform, no SDK.

── API CALL THAT JUST RAN ──


    

    
Rate limited · No data stored · One message per hour

  


  

    
── About ──

    

      I'm Adham. I build on telecom infrastructure and document
      what I find — what works, what breaks, and what the API actually
      looks like when it's doing real work.
    

    
API-first. Telecom-native.

    More about me →