Richard Kohberger explains A2P 10DLC, a carrier program that lets businesses send SMS from regular 10-digit numbers instead of expensive short codes. It costs $4 to register and $10 a month, plus a fraction of a penny per message. Congress and the FCC pushed carriers to create it to reduce spam.
Questions this video answers
10-digit long code (a regular 10-digit phone number).
Application-to-person.
$4 initial registration fee (stated as of June 8, 2021).
$10 per month.
Per-message surcharges are fractions of a penny and vary by receiving carrier.
What's going on everybody? It's Richard Kohberger here, the blue collar nerd. So I have some complicated and arguably not great news for you. It involves Congress and the FCC and mobile carriers like Verizon and AT&T and you. It's something called a 2P10 DLC. So what the heck is that? Well, 10 DLC, that's a 10 digit long code. It's what non telecom industry people and non aliens would refer to as a regular phone number. And a 2P, that stands for application to person. So this is a new protocol that changes how businesses using some sort of application to communicate with individuals, with people need to go about doing that. So before this change, there were basically two routes that a company could use to send messages to its customers. And we'll think of them as like two roads. So one road was like a really major highway, like a paid turnpike. And this turnpike was short codes. So if you've ever received a text message from a business that came from like a five to six digit phone number, that message came from this highway. Now the benefit of this big turnpike is that it's huge. It was built for this. So companies would get really high throughput, meaning they could send lots and lots of messages all at one time without having to wait. It also offered really good deliverability rates. So there wasn't a very high chance that a carrier like Verizon or AT&T would filter that message because messages coming down this highway were considered more reputable. Now the downsides were that this highway, this turnpike, was really expensive to use and you had to use these short codes, which weren't very personal. A lot of companies, especially local companies, prefer to use regular phone numbers that appear to be from the area. And so for those reasons, many companies used the other road, the 10 DLC road. But this road was not built for this. This road is more like a just regular suburban back road. So that means worse deliverability rates. There was a higher chance of your message getting filtered, lower throughputs, you can't send as many messages all at one time. And because there was less of a process to get on this road, it meant that spammers were using it left and right. Okay, so talks about doing something about this problem started a while ago, I want to say around 2018. So congressional leaders and the FCC, they were looking at these phone providers, Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and they were saying, hey guys, you kind of need to do something about this. And the carriers were like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, don't even worry about it, don't worry about it, we're on it. And then some time would pass and the FCC Congress be like, yes, you really need to do something about this. And the carriers again would be like, oh that, oh yeah, we're on that. Yeah, don't even worry about it. We're going to take care. So finally the FCC and the congressional leaders, they said, hey, do something about this or we're going to be imposing regulation. So this, this A2P10 DLC. This is the result of that. So the carriers have built a new road and it's not quite as small and dinky as the suburban back road, but, but it's not quite as big and expensive as the short code highway. So how this works is there's an initial registration process and registration fee. The registration fee is four bucks. It's not a big deal. I should rephrase. It's four bucks right now at 226 on June 8th of 2021. It could change. I'm just giving you the information that is here right now. So once your brand is registered, you'll be assigned a reputation score. And that score basically says that you're legit, you're a real company and you're allowed to be sending text messages through this highway. Then after that there's a $10 per month fee to stay registered and then there's a per text message surcharge. And that surcharge is fractions of a penny. Now a caveat is that surcharge, that per text message charge, it's not universal. Different carriers charge differently and the charge comes from the receiving party's carrier. Meaning when you the business sends a text message, unless you happen to know that person's phone carrier, you don't know exactly how much that text message is going to cost. Pretty sick, right? I know. If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment in the comment section down below. If you thought I did a decent job explaining all this, please hit that like button. It would mean the world to me. Hit subscribe if you haven't done that already. And hit that bell icon so that YouTube notifies you anytime I upload a new video. Appreciate it. Peace it.
