What is 10DLC and Why Does it Matter?
Updated December 12, 2022
Mobile messaging has quickly become the number-one way that people elect to receive communications. In the past decade, there’s been a massive shift away from phone calls — and their effectiveness continues to fall year after year.
Instead, businesses and organizations across all industries have been turning to mass texting to effectively communicate important information and marketing to their audiences.
Every day we’re seeing new creative ways that companies are making use of A2P messaging to connect with people. A2P, or “application to person,” is an industry term used to reference sending text messages to individuals programmatically from computers. You’ve likely received an A2P text message if you’ve ever gotten a marketing text or an SMS reminder from your doctor’s office.
While use cases have been constantly growing and evolving, one thing that was slower to evolve was the messaging services that supported them. That changed with the introduction of 10DLC messaging.
What is 10DLC?
10DLC stands for “10-digit long code.” Also known as “commercial long codes,” these phone numbers are becoming the new standard in A2P text messaging for many organizations. While it may sound confusing, it’s actually quite simple. A 10DLC number is just a standard 10-digit phone number that supports the high volume messaging throughput required for business use cases.
When the first version of 10-digit A2P messaging came out many years ago, it was only designed for very low throughput and simple one-on-one communications. As use cases for business text messaging and SMS marketing have grown, so has the demand for these messaging services that haven’t been able to keep up. So, 10 DLC SMS is the next generation of A2P text messaging that addresses this specific need.
Why 10DLC?
There are several reasons why the messaging industry has decided to create 10DLC SMS but it really comes down to a few specific things… messaging volume, accountability, and new business opportunities. Let’s go deeper and explore each.
Messaging Volume
Currently, there are just a few options for sending A2P text messages. You can either use standard long codes, toll-free long codes, or short codes. Each has its pros and cons.
Short codes are five or six-digit numbers that support extremely high-volume messaging and are used primarily for SMS marketing and mass text alerts. With short codes you can send millions of text messages per day at rates up to 500 per second. They can be quite expensive and range anywhere from $850 to $1,500 per month just for the number. Up until this point, short codes are the only A2P messaging channel that supports large text blasts. They require a formal application process, an 8- to 12-week waiting period, and also do not support phone calls.
Toll-free long codes are standard toll-free phone numbers that support text messaging and phone calls. While they are an alternative for some businesses that cannot foot the bill for their own short code, they can only send at a rate of 3 messages per second and support sending of a few thousand texts per day.
Local long codes are normal, everyday 10-digit local phone numbers. They can only send at a rate of 1 message per second and only support sending a few hundred messages per day. They are really only meant for 1 to 1, transactional messaging and phone calls.
So after a quick review of these three options for sending A2P messaging, it’s obvious that there isn’t an affordable solution for sending mass quantities of text messages. Short codes are great but with the monthly cost for just the number alone, it’s not feasible for many businesses. Additionally, they don’t support voice so phone calls are out of the question. 10DLC text messaging will soon become the fourth option for A2P messaging.
While there is still a lot of speculation around what these 10 DLC numbers will actually be capable of, we know that they are intended to support a medium to high volume rate of sending that is between that of toll-free numbers and short codes. Early discussions with carriers and other industry leaders have indicated that 10DLCs should be capable of sending around 100,000 text messages per month with a send rate of between 5 and 15 text messages per second. Additionally, their costs per month are expected to be on par with standard long codes which are normally between $1 and $2.
Accountability
With short codes being the only true way of sending mass text messages at scale, how do businesses make use of their power in an affordable way? They share them. Shared short codes are standard, everyday short codes that are used by many brands. In some cases, thousands of brands will use a single number.
While this has worked for years and continues to do so, there’s an inherent problem that the carriers see with shared short codes. If someone is sending spam, or violating their guidelines, it becomes much more difficult to identify who’s at fault. Furthermore, in order to shut them down, they have to shut the entire short code down which would terminate thousands of other innocent text programs that are likely playing by the rules.
10DLCs SMS aims to solve this specific issue as each business or organization would have its own dedicated number. At just a few dollars per month and the ability to send high volumes of numbers, these commercial long codes are the perfect solution to message volume and accountability issues.
Carriers like AT&T have explicitly come out and said that once 10DLC SMS is alive and working across all carrier networks, their plans are to sunset shared short codes. This was outlined in their latest code of conduct document however there has been no official word as to what that “wind down” process would look like. There are also no time frames associated with it.
AT&T has been the pioneer in proposing these changes to shared short codes as no other carriers have hinted at the same actions. It is likely, however, that the others will follow at some point. If and when AT&T decides to sunset shared short codes, there will be a “migration period” where users of shared codes will be able to secure their own dedicated short codes or move to 10DLC numbers.
New business opportunities
Cellular carriers are in the business of making money. Anyone who works in the mobile messaging space with any business intelligence can see the gaping hole of opportunity that lies between toll-free numbers and short codes. Businesses need to send messages at scale. Currently, they have very limited options. The product opportunity is as clear as day.
What makes things even sweeter is that carriers make little money on existing long-code messaging. They will make much more on 10DLC SMS messaging as the costs will be the same as short codes. Once it’s widely adopted and in use, people will naturally migrate their messaging traffic to this new commercial A2P channel even with the increase in rates. More dollars in the pockets of the carriers will keep the shareholders happy.
Features of 10DLC Numbers
Now that we understand what 10 DLC is, why the messaging industry is working to build it out, and the entire backstory, let’s take a closer look at what features and functionality we can expect to see with this new messaging channel.
Higher messaging throughput
With the new 10DLC numbers, we can expect to see much higher messaging throughput than we currently get on either local or toll-free long codes. While we know it won’t have the same capabilities as short codes regarding send rates, we do believe that it will satisfy most business needs as far as mass text messaging.
Lower costs
As stated before, 10DLC numbers, should be relatively low in cost compared to short codes and run only a few dollars per month per number. This one is not chiseled in stone yet, however. As far as the cost per message, it will be more expensive than standard long code messaging but it won’t be any more than the cost per message when sending with short codes.
A dedicated line
The new 10DLC text messaging solution will offer people the ability to have dedicated numbers. Again, this is pretty much due to their low cost. This will be a large plus however for those who want strict control of what types of messages are being sent with the number they use. One bad apple can’t spoil the bunch. Additionally, businesses will be able to provision their landlines as 10DLC numbers so that they can send and receive text messages with their existing numbers.
Voice-enabled
Aside from the messaging functionality and unlike short codes, the new 10DLC numbers are confirmed to support voice as well. This will allow you to send and receive text messages on the same number that people can simply pick up the phone and dial. This will help to create a much more cohesive experience for consumers who are interacting with their favorite businesses and brands.
The 10DLC Rollout
So we know that this new 10DLC messaging channel is not here yet but is just around the corner… so they say. Among the outstanding questions that are left, one big one is how the rollout and launch are going to work. As we saw in the early years of SMS, it’s won’t be that effective if all cellular carriers aren’t ready to play ball. When text messaging was first launched, it was much less effective than it is today as you could only send texts to people using your same network. So AT&T customers could only text other AT&T customers and no one else. The same is true for 10DLC messaging.
In order for commercial long codes to be truly effective in their purpose, each of the carriers will have to have their own 10DLC product ready and working. From what we can tell, there’s still some time before that happens. As things stand, Verizon tried to launch theirs on Feb 1, 2018, but had to push their launch date back because of a lack of readiness. In 2021 there was political pushback on implementing 10DLC.
Only after each individual carrier has worked out its bugs and launched its version of 10DLC text messaging will businesses and organizations truly be able to take advantage of what it has to offer. It’s important that they all play nice with each other and realize that if they don’t work in harmony, the chances of success are much lower.
Overall, this new A2P SMS messaging channel is expected to be a game changer for many different industries. As we continue to evolve and explore new ways of leveraging messaging to communicate, so do the businesses we interact with. 10DLC messaging will only help them to keep up.
