Important Cell Phone Carrier & Pricing Changes – ACTION REQUIRED by September 17th
Introduction to 10DLC
If you’re a customer of Captivated, you’ve already been using 10-digit long code (10DLC) for business texting, but until recently, 10DLC phone numbers were only intended for person-to-person (P2P) SMS traffic between family and friends. Application to Peer (A2P) messaging, i.e. texts from Captivated to your customers, have become increasingly popular, and U.S. carriers want to weed out the bad actors and create a channel customers can trust, that’s free of spam and unsolicited communications.
To accomplish that goal, carriers have together adopted a set of standards and registration processes called “10DLC” to better understand who is using 10DLC for A2P (business texting) and what they’re sending across the network. 10DLC is a channel created by mobile carriers for business-to-consumer (A2P) messaging over local business phone numbers.
Captivated's Response to 10DLC
Captivated is actively working on registering each of our customers with a Brand (the company or entity initiating messages to the consumer) and Campaign (a collection of information used to identify use case and CTIA compliance for carrier evaluation), to ensure that your messages will have the highest rate of deliverability and not be hindered by pesky spam filters. Businesses who are registered are vetted and given a “trust score” that determines their daily message throughput.
Captivated is absorbing the cost to register your brand. The ongoing charge for your business to have an active campaign is $10/month. Captivated is passing on the $10 monthly fee from the Campaign Registry. If you are not on one of our professional or enterprise plans, you will see a $10 line item increase on your monthly invoice beginning in October of 2021.
**Small businesses may opt to register as a “low-volume” campaign for $2/month. Note: The “low-volume” campaign type has a limit of six messages per minute across the AT&T network. Messages over the limit are subject to throttling (delaying the delivery of the message).**
Carriers have also increased their per message cost as much as 1 cent on MMS (picture messages) and 1/2 cent on SMS (regular message segments). At this time, Captivated is NOT increasing the cost of your subscription plan with included message counts. We must, however, increase the cost of metered messages sent outside of your plan to cover the additional carrier fees that have already gone into effect. The metered message increase of 1/2 cent, will take place on October 1st, 2021. This increase includes Canadian phone numbers.
Carriers, such as AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless and US Cellular, have informed Captivated and others, that brands who are not registered will experience a disruption of service. These carriers will stop supporting SMS traffic from 10DLC numbers that are unregistered, meaning messages to customers will fail and the sender will receive an error message.
**As your Connectivity Partner, we are requiring that each of our customers are registered via The Campaign Registry, and we will take care of the registration process on your behalf. As a reminder, please keep an eye out for a required form from Captivated Support requesting your Legal Company Name and EIN.**
The Benefits of Registering
Text from a recognized local area code
A regulated channel protected from spam
Improved deliverability and throughput
A cost-effective solution
What's Next?
**Please reach out to Captivated Support via our in-app support chat to complete our required registration form or complete it HERE. If your Administrator is not actively signed-in to Captivated, please send them this link.**
We appreciate your assistance and cooperation as these industry-wide regulations are taking effect.
FAQ
A brand is the company or entity initiating messages to the consumer.
A campaign is a collection of information used to identify use case and CTIA compliance for carrier evaluation. A campaign requires details such as message examples and industry vertical.
10DLC stands for 10-digit long code and it’s a channel the mobile carriers have designated for business-to-consumer (A2P) messaging over local phone numbers.
All U.S. carriers are in the process of adopting 10DLC including AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile/Sprint and US Cellular.
The current pass-thru cost is $10/month.
All businesses using 10DLC numbers to send messages to customers serviced by U.S. mobile carriers will need to register.
Yes. This is a universal change for all business texting providers.
No. Toll-free numbers and short codes are regulated differently and are currently not subject to these regulations, however they are subject to the same message rates and fees as local 10-digit phone numbers.
In short, carriers want to be sure that their customers will not receive unwanted, dangerous, and spam-like text messages. The Campaign Registry or an assigned third party will assign your business a trust score based on whether your use case is low or high risk. A “low-risk” use case may be something like two-factor authentication. A high-risk use case may be sending messages about debt relief.
Captivated needs your Legal Company Name and EIN number, which are both required by the Campaign Registry to complete your registration by our September 17th, 2021 deadline.
Yes, the Campaign Registry is requiring registration for Canadian businesses and phone numbers at this time. Registration is required for all 10-digit long code SMS numbers.