A2P 10DLC Explained

Notice – Update, August 24, 2021:
Registration of your Brand, your customers’ Brands, and all Campaigns should be completed by September 30, 2021

Starting October 1, there is a heightened risk of increased per-message carrier fees and filtering for unregistered traffic, which could cause delivery failures.

REGISTRATION INFO

What is A2P 10DLC?

 

A2P 10DLC refers to a system in the United States that allows businesses to send Application-to-Person (A2P) type messaging via standard 10-digit long code (10DLC) phone numbers. Carriers in the US consider all Twilio traffic to be A2P. Carriers’ A2P 10DLC offerings provide better delivery quality and lower filtering risk than long code SMS of the past, using the same phone numbers.

To benefit from improved deliverability and increased throughput in the new verified A2P 10DLC ecosystem. A2P 10DLC comes with new registration requirements for businesses that intend to send long code messages to AT&T in the US.

Who are the new guidelines for?

 

The guidelines are for businesses that are using an application platform to send messages to customers. They are required to register with the Campaign Registry, regardless of their use case. If you do not send any messages to users in the United States using long code numbers, you do not need to do anything. Please read the best practice guidelines.

Please Note: These changes currently only apply to 10DLC numbers sending messages to AT&T & T-Mobile numbers. If you are sending messaging exclusively outside of the US, no changes need to be made at this time.

How does A2P 10DLC work?

 

A2P 10DLC (10 digits long code) has been specially designed and sanctioned for business messaging. It offers simplicity, stability, delivery reliability, and security to businesses and their audiences. There are two important requirements under the new A2P 10DLC system:

1. Brand RegistrationBusinesses must identify who they are to the carrier networks.

2. Campaign RegistrationBusinesses must register what type of messages they are sending.

Registration Process:

 

How do I register my brand?

To simplify the process we have integrated with The Campaign Registry (TCR) to meet the requirements of carriers. Click on register now, follow the steps to complete the form. Send the completed form to support@cebodtelecom.com.

Register

 

What is the deadline to register?

The deadline to complete your brand registration is before October 1, 2021. This requirement applies to all the businesses that are using an application platform to send messages to customers.

What is the process of brand registration?

Upon completing the brand registration form, your company name, address and EIN will be verified against multiple databases and will then be confirmed as Verified or Unverified. All the Verified brands are then assigned a Trust Score between 0 and 100. This rating influences the maximum message throughput that will be allocated to each of your Campaign use cases.

Pricing:

 

Understanding the pricing and fees involved with A2P 10DLC.

There are two types of fees associated with A2P 10DLC: registration fees, and per-message carrier fees also referred to as Network Access Fees (NAF). Both types of fees are charged by carriers as part of the A2P 10DLC system and are passed through by DIDforSale to our customers.

Registration fees are applied when registering your US A2P Brand and your A2P Use Case.

Carrier fees are also charged by carriers for A2P 10DLC messages sent to users on their networks. T

Please see below for a full breakdown of the fees associated with A2P 10DLC.

Description Quantity Price/Rate Notes
NON-RECURRING CHARGES
10DLC A2P Brand Registration (includes 3rd party vetting) NRC per Customer’s Brand $50.00 b
10DLC A2P Campaign Activation (Pass through cost from T-mobile) NRC per Campaign_ID $50.00 b
MONTHLY RECURRING and USAGE CHARGES
10DLC A2P Campaign Registration MRC per Campaign_ID $15.00 b
10DLC A2P Gray Route Non-Compliance Violation per Message $10.00 b
Destination Service Provider or Country Termination Fee per Message Variable a
Destination Service Provider or Country Origination Fee per Message Variable a
Notes and Remarks

a.     Additional inbound or outbound fees may apply based on country or carrier.
b.     Pass-through fees from operators, all these fees are non-refundable even if the campaign or brand is approved or denied.

 

 

Other Resources:

 

With massive changes coming for SMS/MMS campaigns it can get very confusing.We have put together varied resources to simplify it for you.

Best Practice Guidelines

 

Cebod Telecom Messaging Service Policies and Best Practice Guidelines

These Cebod Telecom Messaging Service Policies and Best Practices Guidelines (“Guidelines”) are intended to provide general guidance and are the proprietary information of Cebod Telecom, Inc. (“Cebod Telecom”). These Guidelines are provided for informational purposes only, and Cebod Telecom makes no warranties in these Guidelines. These Guidelines are not inclusive or exhaustive and are subject to change at Cebod Telecom’s discretion, at any time. Cebod Telecom reserves the right in its sole discretion to remove or deny any traffic which does not comply with these Guidelines.

1.0 Introduction
The Cebod Telecom messaging solution supports superior quality and high integrity communications. Spam or unwanted messaging is forbidden. To protect consumers and the ecosystem from abuse, Cebod Telecom enforces guidelines designed to promote best practices for the exchange of messages. The viability of the messaging ecosystem is dependent on consumer perception of messaging as a trusted and convenient communication environment. These Guidelines are intended to preserve the credibility and utility of the ecosystem. The objective of these Guidelines is to enable wanted messages and prevent unwanted or deceptive messages. While these Guidelines are intended to encourage correct behaviors, the spirit behind them is equally important. Message senders acting in bad faith to thwart or undermine the spirit of these Guidelines should expect to experience penalties.

2.0 Enforcement
Policy enforcement is performed at several points during message delivery including:
1. Cebod Telecom policy management systems.
2. Aggregator policy management systems (e.g., Sybase, Syniverse, Zipwhip).
3. Carrier policy management systems. (e.g., T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, Sprint, AT&T Wireless)

3.0 Violations
Violations of Guidelines may result in one or more of the following resolutions taken by Cebod Telecom, aggregator or carrier:
1. Blocking of individual messages
2. Blocking of phone numbers
3. Repeated violation may result in termination of messaging or other network services
4.0 Definitions

Blacklisting: Numbers which have sent repeated known spam/unwanted content are subject to automatic blacklisting without notification for up to 30 days. Multiple or repeat offenses may result in permanent blacklisting. Additionally, numbers which have been reported by industry partners for spam/unwanted content may also be subject to permanent blacklisting.

Consumer: An individual person who subscribes to specific wireless messaging services or messaging applications. Consumers do not include agents of businesses, organizations, or entities which send messages to consumers. Consumers are natural persons with uniquely assigned phone numbers (long codes i.e. local phone numbers) which can be dialed.

Non-Consumer: A business, organization or entity which uses messaging to communicate with consumers. Examples may include but are not limited to, large-to-small businesses, financial institutions, schools, medical practices, customer service entities, non-profit organizations and political campaigns.

Consumer Person-to-Person (P2P): Consumer (P2P) messaging is sent by a consumer to one or more consumers and is consistent with typical consumer operation (i.e., message exchanges are consistent with conversational messaging among consumers). Some consumers utilize automation to assist in responding to communications. For example, a consumer may direct their messaging service to auto reply to a phone call in order to inform the caller about the consumer’s status (e.g., “I’m busy” or “Driving now, can’t talk”). Such use of automation to assist consumers in their composition and sending of messages falls within the attributes of typical consumer operation. In contrast, automation in whole or in part used by non-consumers to facilitate messaging is not a typical consumer operation.

Non-Consumer Application-to-Person (A2P): Messages sent from an application, typically web-based, to a mobile subscriber. Some common use cases include two-factor authentication (2FA), travel notifications, banking alerts or marketing messages. A2P delivery methods are either via toll-free messaging service or soon to be implemented 10DLC (10-digit long code).

Fingerprinting: The process of extracting data points from identified spam content is known as “fingerprinting”. Once message content has been fingerprinted as spam, all content found to be correlated to that fingerprint will be blocked in the future. Fingerprints do not expire or age out of existence.

MM4: MM4 is a 3GPP protocol for MMS service which covers the routing of an MMS from an originator MMS relay/server to a recipient MMS relay/server. MM4 is based on SMTP (email) protocol. MM4 is an extension of Internet simple mail transport protocol (SMTP) according to STD 10 (RFC 2821).

Multimedia Message Service (MMS): Facilitates group messaging and allows for the exchange of multimedia content between mobile devices including video, pictures and audio.

REST API: Application programming interface (API) used to establish messaging connectivity for sending and receiving messages and other service-related access.

Short Message Service (SMS): Commonly known as “text messaging” is a service for sending and receiving messages of up to 160 characters to mobile devices. Longer messages will be fragmented into smaller message fragments. Maximum character length per message fragment varies depending on the character set used in the body of the message, whether GSM default alphabet or Unicode.
Short Message Peer-to-Peer (SMPP): SMPP is an open, industry-standard Internet protocol designed to provide a flexible data communication interface for the transfer of SMS messages between external short messaging entities (ESME), routing entities (RE), and short message service centers (SMSC).
Unwanted Messages: May include, but are not limited to, unsolicited bulk commercial messages (i.e., spam); “phishing” messages intended to access private or confidential information through deception; other forms of abusive, harmful, malicious, unlawful, or otherwise inappropriate messages; and messages which require an opt-in but did not obtain such opt-in (or such opt-in was revoked)

Please refer to the PDF for detailed information regarding the Best Practice Guidelines.

Best Practice Policies and Guidelines

Benefits of Registering

 

Improved Deliverability
Once you complete the registration process you are allocated trust scores. This process pre-approves the campaign, and you can be assured that your messages will not be flagged or blocked by carriers. Your deliverability will improve as to what message you’re sending and to whom will already be on record.

High Throughput
The idea of Brand Registration is to also give valid businesses a higher throughput if there is a valid use case. Throughput is determined based on who is sending the message (the Brand) and what is being sent (the Use Case/campaign), not on the number of phone numbers associated with the Campaign. The best course of action is to go through the vetting process, declare a Use Case, and provide a detailed explanation of the Campaign. The info you give will be used to determine – trust score and together with the use case, it will determine the throughput, so you will be able to reach a larger customer base in a short span of time.

Customer Trust
Since the goal is to deliver legitimate campaigns and the campaign registry will be catching spam or invalid brands and campaigns right in the beginning, the end-users will receive only those messages that are screened and approved. Getting relevant messages builds confidence within the customers and their trust in the brand and the messages that are being received increases.

If these benefits are not enough to convince you to register with the Campaign Registry, just know that by not registering not only are you compromising the deliverability and throughput rates and trust of your customers but also there are high chances of your messages being blocked or flagged and there might be penalty fees related to it. Therefore, it’s best to register rightaway!

Best Practices to Register

 

First and the most important is to be transparent and honest. You do not want to be in a situation where you are flagged for an error in your brand information or other information requested.

Secondly, we advise you to be clear and detailed, especially for special use cases. Your use case is what you are using that campaign for. This lets the wireless career know what type of messaging to expect.

Below is a list of the use cases that you can select from. When reviewing a campaign, carriers will look at the campaign description and see if it matches the content of the messages being sent.

Standard Use Case Description
2FA Any two-factor authentication, verification or one-time passcode
Account Notifications Standard notifications for account holders, relating to and being about a user’s account
Customer Care All customer care interaction, including but not limited to account management and customer support
Delivery Notifications Notification about the status of the delivery of a product or service
Fraud Alert Messaging Notifications regarding potential fraudulent activity on a user’s account
Higher Education Messaging created on behalf of Colleges or Universities, including School Districts and education institutions. This use case is NOT for the “free to the consumer” messaging model
Low Volume Mixed For Brands that have multiple use cases and only need very low messaging throughput. Examples include: test or demo accounts, small businesses (single Doctor’s office, single Pizza shop etc)
Marketing Any communication that includes marketing and/or promotional content
Mixed Any messaging campaign containing 2 to 5 standard use cases
Polling and voting The sending of surveys and polling/voting campaigns for non-political arenas
Public Service Announcement Informational messaging to raise an audience’s awareness about important issues
Security Alert A notification that the security of a system, either software or hardware, has been compromised in some way and there is an action you need to take.
Special Use Case Description
Carrier Exemptions Exemption by Carrier
Charity Communications from a registered charity aimed at providing help and raising money for those in need. Includes: 5013C Charity
Conversational Peer-to-peer app-based group messaging with proxy/pooled numbers. Supporting personalized services and non-exposure of personal numbers for enterprise or A2P communications.
Emergency Notification services designed to support public safety / health during natural disasters, armed conflicts, pandemics and other national or regional emergencies.
Sweepstakes All sweepstakes messaging
Political Part of organized effort to influence decision making of specific group. All campaigns to be verified.
Social Communication between public figures/influencers and their communities. Examples include: YouTube Influencers’ alert or Celebrity alerts
Platform Free Trial CSP “Free Trial” Offers for non paying customers
Agents; franchise; local branches Brands that have multiple agents, franchiises or offices in the same brand vertical, but require individual localized numbers per agent/location/office.
Sole Proprietor Limited to entities without EIN / Tax ID

 

FAQs

 

  • Does A2P 10DLC change apply only to Cebod Telecom?
    NO! This is an industry-wide change and all messaging services providers are required to comply.

 

  • What information do I need to register?
    To complete the registration process you are required to fill out the applicable information in the Registration form. However, it’s very important to understand registration components. There are two components:

 

    1. Brands – The first set of information is focused on your business to be registered as a Brand. Once registered, a Brand is given a unique Brand ID that is associated with ALL its campaigns and numbers, and messages. To become a Brand, the registry requires you to provide details about your business such as official company name, website, address, Tax ID / EIN, point of contact, direct number, and email.
    2. Campaigns We will then need to register each of your unique campaigns. Once approved, each campaign will also be given a unique ID which will be registered directly with the MNO’s (Mobile Network Operators ). Information required will be your campaign’s use cases, opt-in/out process, message samples.

 

  • How long does the registration process take?
    Approximately 3-5 business days (can take shorter or longer depending on the information submitted).

 

  • Can I use more than one Long Code number in one campaign?
    Yes, as long as you have a valid use case for doing so

 

  • What if I don’t register?
    ALL of your 10DLC traffic MUST be registered. If you fail to do so then any A2P message received by the wireless carriers that are not registered will very likely be blocked (even if all other CTIA guidelines are met) or heavily tariffed.

 

  • Does this apply to Toll-Free Numbers?
    Not yet! Although there will likely be similar changes to Toll-Free in the very near future.

 

  • Is MMS messaging affected by A2P 10DLC?
    Yes, MMS messaging via long code is subject to carrier fees as part of A2P 10DLC. We also expect registered MMS traffic to ultimately benefit from reduced carrier filtering. However, long code MMS messaging remains subject to throughput limits, due to limited carrier capacity.

 

  • What factors will affect my maximum approved throughput?

When your brand is registered, it is assigned a Trust Score. Your trust score along with your campaign type will determine your maximum approved throughput.

 

  • What is a campaign?
    A campaign refers to a unique use case! For example, if you send marketing messages and also send alert messages, that would represent two different use cases.

 

  • What if I am already registered on The Campaign Registry with another provider, will I need to re-register again?
    Yes! Each messaging provider is its own CSP (Campaign Service Provider) & registered uniquely.