The present invention provides multi-carrier support in a wireless Internet gateway (WIG) that allows the WIG to send messages to any number of `peer` gateways on the Internet in a conveniently reconfigurable manner. The disclosed embodiments include a `Message Distribution Center` (MDC), through which short messages can be routed to the gateways of other wireless carriers based on carrier formats stored in an abstracted carrier format table. The conventional technique of separate classes written for each carrier is replaced by entries in a look-up table format, to provide a more easily adaptable wireless gateway. Thus, occasional updates of the carrier format table need only be updated, rather than the wireless Internet gateway program, reducing down time for updates, reducing the complexity of updates, and improving the reliability of a wireless Internet gateway in the face of changes for one or more carriers in a wireless network.