10DLC vetting process

As 10DLC continues to evolve, the wireless carriers have identified a gap in the registration process - campaigns aren't being registered appropriately and don't adhere to the carriers’ codes of conduct. As a result, there have been changes to the sole proprietor use case and now there will be additional review (vetting) completed on newly registered campaigns. There are 3 major changes associated with the campaign vetting process:

1. All newly created 10DLC campaigns will be subject to manual review and will be placed in a “pending” status until this review is completed.
2. $15 fee per vetting event.
3. The provisioning flow will change so that a telephone number (TN) won’t be able to be associated with a campaign until it's fully approved.

Pending status

On January 26, 2023, The Campaign Registry (TCR) released a feature that eliminated the auto “accept” option for secondary Direct Connect Aggregators (DCA). This means all new campaigns will default to a Pending status and require manual review by the wireless industry’s main 10DLC Direct Connect Aggregator (DCA) to approve or reject the campaigns.

Beginning January 10, 2023, newly registered campaigns that utilize Bandwidth as the Connectivity Partner began to go through the manual review process so we started seeing campaigns that appear to be approved in TCR but are still pending with the secondary DCA.

The manual review process will increase the time it takes for campaigns to be ready for 10DLC traffic so please plan accordingly and register as early as possible. We expect delays of several days for the initial review of a campaign, but it could be longer. Please follow our 10DLC registration best practices to ensure the most expedient and successful campaign registration experience.

Campaigns in any state other than “approved” by the DCA are subject to blocking from the wireless carriers. If you'd like to check the status of your campaign, you can use the CSP portal (if you're registering directly with TCR). Once the campaign is fully approved by the secondary DCA, T-Mobile and Verizon will show Yes in the Elected DCA column. We've added this status to our GET API and also allow you to receive the DCA_COMPLETE webhook from TCR. 

Vetting fee

Beginning January 31, 2023, the DCA mentioned above is also implementing a $15.00 USD vetting fee on 10DLC campaigns. As currently understood, this is an additional new fee that will be charged per “vetting event.” While precise implications are still not entirely known, this may mean that if the DCA declines a campaign twice before it's finally approved, Service Providers would be charged three vetting fees for a total of $45.00 USD for a single campaign’s vetting and approval process.

These fees will be passed through a month in arrears, so you'll see campaigns vetted in February charged on your April invoice. 

Provisioning process

Once campaigns are put into Pending status by the secondary DCA, we're now preventing TNs from being assigned to campaigns until the campaign is fully approved. We're making this change to protect deliverability as some mobile network operators will not support traffic from campaigns in a pending or unapproved status.

Important: You must import your campaign into the Bandwidth App in order for it to be shared with our secondary DCA. The date you import is when it will be shared downstream.

When attempting to assign a TN to a campaign that isn’t fully approved by the DCA, you'll receive error 12219, "Campaign with id 'XYZ' has not been accepted by DCA2 yet." The new provisioning flow can be seen below:

Based on what we currently know, the happy path (straight line through the diagram at the top of the flow chart) can take five business days or more.

Any declines that cause you to have to update the campaign and flow it back through the vetting queue will prolong the process and timeline for it to be fully approved. Once declined, the campaign does not automatically deactivate, but you can edit or manually deactivate it (please note that you'll still be charged for the first 3 months of the campaign).

If you're editing your campaign after rejection and need to resubmit it to the secondary DCA, please re-import the campaign into the Bandwidth App (via UI or API), which will trigger us to share the campaign with the DCA again. Bandwidth is currently working to support the "nudge" function from TCR, but in the meantime, re-importing into the Bandwidth App will achieve the same function on the back end.

Note: Any time a campaign is re-imported while in a rejected status, we'll share the campaign with the downstream DCA. It's best practice to only re-import the campaign once you're fully done making updates to it and are ready for it to be resubmitted. Please do not re-import the campaign multiple times as it may result in multiple vetting events unnecessarily. 

This new vetting process will add additional time to have your campaign ready, but there's one more component to the registration before your traffic is considered fully 10DLC compliant with all carriers. After TNs are assigned to a campaign, the following steps are taken to ensure you're fully registered with each carrier:

• AT&T and Verizon – once TNs are assigned to a campaign, Bandwidth sends an API call to NetNumber to associate the TN with the campaign in the Override Service Registry (OSR). 
  • This process typically takes less than 30 minutes unless there is queueing at NetNumber.
  • Completion of this step means AT&T and Verizon are fully registered and compliant.
• T-Mobile – there is an additional step to add the numbers and campaigns to T-Mobile’s A2P provisioning platform.
  • Once a TN is associated with an approved campaign, we utilize an API through the DCA that will add the TN(s) and campaign(s) to this platform. 
  • If we receive a positive response from this API, we'll send one final API call to NetNumber. This signifies to T-Mobile that a TN is fully provisioned when you send traffic.
  • The T-Mobile portion of the provisioning can take anywhere from minutes to a few days, depending on how much traffic is being sent into their provisioning platform at the time. 

Here's the flow for the carrier registration steps once the TNs are assigned to the campaign in the Bandwidth App:

How to resubmit vetting

With the introduction of the new provisioning process, you may find your campaign in a Pending, Declined, or Accepted state. You can find its status in the Vetting column on My Campaigns page.

If your campaign was declined, you can click the campaign ID to learn more about the decline reason.

The decline reason will tell you what needs to be adjusted on the campaign in order to get it approved by our aggregator. Once you've made all the necessary edits, click Resubmit Vetting.

Important: Please resubmit the campaign only once you're done making all of your edits.

If your campaign gets accepted after you resubmit it (or if it's accepted after the initial submission), the Campaign Vetting status will be Registered. The Resubmit Vetting button will be greyed out since you won't need to resubmit the campaign.