SMART customers have been complaining that since last week, they have been receiving text messages which they cannot read, because they are being transmitted with junk characters, instead of legible characters; and likewise, people they have been texting have been receiving their messages in illegible form.

SMART’s PR Manager Ian Courtenay told Amandala today that the problem—which was triggered by an upgrade in their SMART Message Service Center—should be cleared up by this weekend.

According to Courtenay, when the system was upgraded, the problem was reported by customers using particular types of phone devices, and the problem, he said, is handset-specific. SMART has had to communicate the information to Tango, its overseas service provider.

Courtenay told us that, “those [bad texts] should be cleared up by this weekend.”