Exciting news! You (and your customers) can text in Alaska, Hawaii… and a whole lot more!

Bandwidth’s got some big news … you and your customers can text ‘Aloha’ to your friends in Hawaii or give your Alaskan friends a warm emoji embrace using Bandwidth’s messaging services. That’s right – we’re expanding our texting coverage to Hawaii, Alaska, and a ton of other locations.

18%. That’s a big number when we’re talking about new coverage areas. This nearly 18% expansion of our two-way voice & messaging services includes over 1,700 new rate centers. If you’ve ever been frustrated by Bandwidth’s lack of coverage in those areas where it’s very warm and very cold (or some places in between), the landscape’s definitely changing for the better!

In addition to Alaska and Hawaii’s coverage footprint, we’ve added:

• 19 new rate centers in Oregon
• 34 new rate centers in California
• 61 new rate centers in Florida
• 270 new rate centers in Illinois
• And thousands more!

Great news…but how will it work?

Early this year we introduced some new Bandwidth Dashboard tools that allow you to update the messaging (texting) capability on your telephone numbers. We’re now expanding this toolset to include the option to enable and disable Tier 1, 2 and 3 numbers. These tiers represent over 1,700 new rate centers that you now can order from and use to power your messaging products.

When the coverage goes live in late June, Bandwidth accounts with messaging service and the Tier 1, 2 and 3 numbers associated with those accounts will be set by default as DISABLED for messaging. If you have numbers assigned to your account that you want to utilize for messaging service, you must manage the activation of those records using the Dashboard tools.

For instructions on how to use these tools, please visit the Bandwidth Help Center at http://support.bandwidth.com and search keywords: SMS Registration.  If you are a legacy Bandwidth customer using the My.Bandwidth portal, please open a support ticket to adjust your messaging settings.

If you have any questions regarding these services, please contact us at 855-290-8135 so we can provide you with additional information or applicable paperwork for this new service.

We’re stoked about this expanded offering and what it means for the customers we work with each day.

Boom!