title: Processing large amounts of data in PHP without a browser timeout
body: <p>I have array of mobile numbers, around 50,000.  I'm trying to process and send bulk SMS to these numbers using third-party API, but the browser will freeze for some minutes.  I'm looking for a better option.</p>
  
  <p>Processing of the data involves checking mobile number type (e.g CDMA), assigning unique ids to all the numbers for further referencing, check for network/country unique charges, etc.</p>
  
  <p>I thought of queuing the data in the database and using cron to send about 5k by batch every minute, but that will take time if there are many messages.  What are my other options?</p>
  
  <p>I'm using Codeigniter 2 on XAMPP server.</p>