A2P 10DLC - Understand How to Send Messages to US Phone Numbers with Local Messaging Restrictions

The U.S. telecommunications industry is making efforts to protect consumers and improve the delivery of legitimate text messages. To that end, the industry players developed certain standards for organizations sending Application-to-Person messages to U.S. phone numbers.

It stands for Application-to-Person (A2P) type messaging sent via standard 10-digit long code (10DLC) phone numbers. An organization must register with the TCR any 10DLC phone number that it is using for SMS messaging conversations and campaigns.

This article answers frequently asked questions about A2P 10DLC and outlines the registration process for your company.

⚠️ This is relevant for all organizations that send SMS messages to numbers in the U.S. using Aircall phone numbers because U.S. carriers consider all messages that go through professional solutions like Aircall to be “Application-to-Person” or A2P.

The Campaign Registry (TCR) is the authority that handles the registration of A2P 10DLC messaging campaigns. Its mission is to provide a registration service by working with carriers, messaging companies and industry partners to establish common standards for A2P 10DLC messaging.

If you send text messages to U.S. phone numbers, you will need to fill out the form below.

>> Start your A2P 10DLC Standard registration <<

You can also directly find the form on support.aircall.io by submitting a request under “Number Porting, Purchasing and Compliance” reason then select “Submit new SMS A2P10DLC registration”.

Aircall strongly advises all customers using SMS text messaging to get aligned with A2P10DLC as soon as possible.

Note: If you do not send text messages to U.S. numbers, you do not need to do anything.

Will my organization be affected by these changes?

All organizations that send SMS to U.S. numbers are affected by these new industry rules.

Your message traffic will be subject to heavier carrier filtering and may incur increased per-message carrier fees. Carriers have communicated that they may block all unregistered traffic at some point. In short, your messages might not be received.

There are 3 parts to A2P10DLC Standard registration:

Step 1: Brand & Campaign registration

Step 2: Wait for the campaign to be vetted

After Brand and Campaign creation, the carriers will manually review the information and validate or refuse the campaign. This can take the carriers up to 25 business days to validate.

Step 3: Associate the numbers

Aircall will be your single point of contact to register your campaigns. You do not need to be in contact with the TCR directly. Aircall provides a form to fill in all the information in one go, and automatically updates your porting ticket to let you know at what step of the process you are.

When creating the Brand & Campaign, The Campaign Registry starts charging fees to Aircall based on the type of campaign you created. Aircall will adapt its billing to pass through these fees in customer invoice.

Brand registration fees:

• STANDARD brand registration: $4, one-time fee

Campaign registration fee:

• Campaign validation by carriers - mandatory step called “campaign vetting”: $15 per try
• Campaign registration $50 one-time fee charged by T-Mobile
• For Low-volume or mixed-use cases: $2/month
• For Standard use case: $10/month
• Additional Vetting (optional): $40, one-time fee, for a very high volume of messages

To summarize:

 The fees for a client submitting one registration will be:

•  $69 of one-time fees: 1 brand registration, 1 campaign registration, & 1 campaign vetting
• Monthly fees of either $10/month or $2/month (for “mixed” or “low volume” use cases)

These fees remain the same regardless of the number of lines being registered. 

If you submit a second registration to create another use case, the same fees will be charged again.

Please keep in mind that these fees are subject to change, in which case, Aircall will work to help keep you informed and share the latest updates.

Be ready to provide the following information:

The whole process can take up to 25 days.

The first step: Brand & Campaign registration is a rapid process with the TCR and Aircall will update your ticket with us automatically to inform you of the success within the day.

Then the campaign enters the second step with the vetting process by carriers, which usually take 5 open days. As the volume of registration has been high, the process can be delayed and take up to 25 open days.

Aircall is directly connected to the TCR to get the information about the vetting result and will automatically update the ticket as soon as it is done.

After the campaign vetting process, Aircall will register the numbers, and it should be approved within the day.

No, while the campaign is not yet vetted by the carriers, the numbers cannot be registered. Only after completion of the whole process the numbers will be officially registered and allowed to send SMS.

Toll-Free numbers are not covered by the A2P10DLC rules. You will need to follow a different process to verify Toll-Free US/Canada numbers for messaging compliance. We strongly recommend registering your toll free numbers at the same time, as the information required is quite similar.

Messaging Compliance for Toll-Free US/Canada Numbers

If your number is configured to send SMS with Heymarket, Sakari, or Textline, please contact them directly as the campaign registration process needs to be initiated by them.

Use the form here to edit the list of numbers to be associated with your campaign under “Number Porting, Purchasing and Compliance” reason then select “Update existing SMS A2P10DLC registration”.

You have two options:

You can register a “mixed” or “low volume” use case and then indicate the different use cases you need as sub use cases. Benefit is that it allows you to add all your numbers to a single campaign and these campaigns have a smaller $2 monthly fee. Disadvantage is that the throughput is lower : it allows you to send around 1 SMS per second per major carrier.

This is the option we recommend for Aircall customers, as high throughput is very specific to mass texting.

The other option is to register one campaign for each use case such as one for “customer care” and one for “marketing”, using the form several times.

Benefit is that it provides higher throughput.

Disadvantage is that such campaigns cost $10/month each and the one-time fees will be added up. Also, one number can only be associated with one campaign, so your numbers will have to be dedicated to only one-use case.

This is relevant for all organizations that send SMS messages to numbers in the U.S. using Aircall phone numbers because U.S. carriers consider all messages that go through professional solutions like Aircall to be “Application-to-Person” or A2P.

Please make sure to contact your Customer Success Manager or our Porting Team.