Abstract: An apparatus and a method for improving short message service dependability by reducing the risk of an SM being loss due to failure in a network having both an SMS routers and an SMSC and in which forward and store delivery or Early-Ack is enabled in the router. Alternative apparatus and methods are presented which mitigate the possibility of losing an SM before it is delivered to a recipient or received and persistently stored by the SMSC by placing the SM in a survivable storage medium before acknowledgement of the SM is sent to the submitter of the SM and by providing a recovery mechanism that can re-attempt a delivery or a forwarding of the SM, based on the content of the survivable storage medium, in the case of a failure.