On my system(s) I identify the ports by running this command:

ls -alh /dev/ttyUSB*

If your USB dongle is connected you should see something like:

crw-rw---T 1 root dialout 188, 0 Dec 17 23:09 /dev/ttyUSB0 crw-rw---T 1 root dialout 188, 1 Dec 17 23:09 /dev/ttyUSB1 crw-rw---T 1 root dialout 188, 2 Dec 17 23:09 /dev/ttyUSB2

If so, try using /dev/ttyUSB0 as device in smsd.conf
With my Huawei dongles I get these 3 interfaces when I connect one dongle.

thanks dude , I have done this and corrected the settings but still no joy :-(

To identify the correct port you can also try a command like this:

socat - /dev/ttyUSB0
or
socat - /dev/ttyUSB1
socat - /dev/ttyUSB2

and after entering that mode, you can type commands, directly type "ATI" and see what you get, if it is the correct GSM interface then you should see the IMEI number and maybe a bit more text. If it is the wrong interface (like the storage of that dongle) then you might see more random text that updates around once a second and you might notice text "storage" on screen.

To exit that mde (that socat command) try CTRL+C;
Maybe others can correct me if I am wrong, I am not an expert

Thanks for your help guys. I ran out of time on this and added ido2db to icinga which writes the alerts to a db and my firm already has a bit of code which picks critical alerts out of a db and uses www.clockworksms.com to send sms messages.

I may revisit this one day but

thanks again

Paul