The 10DLC carrier landscape

We’ve gone over the registration process and pricing for 10DLC, but there are other factors to consider. Now we want to highlight some of the key differences between how the carriers are handling their 10DLC launches.
Verizon
Verizon doesn’t have any special requirements for registering traffic and has a surcharge that applies to both SMS and MMS traffic. This has created a pretty smooth process, in no small part since it’s been in place since last spring—Verizon was the first to launch and now AT&T and T-Mobile are following suit.
AT&T and T-Mobile
Both ATT and T-Mobile are doing something different than Verizon, though. They’re both using The Campaign Registry (TCR for short), but in slightly different ways. That means that a Brand and a Campaign will only need to be registered once, but there are different rules applied depending on which carrier is receiving the message you are trying to send.
AT&T has implemented message-per-second limits at the campaign level. Based on the information provided when registering a Campaign, the campaign registry uses proprietary information to assign a campaign class. This class has implications on the number of texts per minute that can be sent as well as the per message surcharge.
We don’t know what’s involved with getting into a higher class. It is proprietary information to TCR, but we do know that having the most accurate information possible when registering a campaign is beneficial. Things like making sure the EIN and website match addresses will help with the class assignment. We definitely encourage customers who have more specific questions to reach out to The Campaign Registry directly.
T-Mobile, on the other hand, is looking at things at more of a Brand level. They have set daily limits on how many messages can be sent to their customers based on the score a Brand receives when registering. Because of these Brand restrictions, customers should be mindful of the campaigns that are assigned to each Brand. If someone is unhappy with the daily limit they are assigned, T-Mobile has a special review process that we outline on our support site.