Transferring messaging services to Bandwidth

When transferring messaging services to Bandwidth, it’s important to remember that while messaging services may be enabled in the Bandwidth App, industry provisioning to Bandwidth may not be complete and might require manual intervention to be properly updated.

The specifics of this process vary, so please discuss your use case(s) with the Bandwidth Onboarding Team during the onboarding process and beyond to prepare for any possible scenarios and timelines you may encounter while transferring messaging services to Bandwidth. 

This article highlights some of the key factors you should consider, along with some general information for the most common scenarios. If you have a unique scenario not covered below or still have questions, please open a ticket with the Bandwidth Support Team. 

Transferring messaging services via porting

When porting numbers to Bandwidth, messaging services are expected, but not guaranteed, to transfer during the port. Some factors to consider during this process:

• Local number porting: It’s standard for the messaging to port with the voice. However, if the end user currently has their messaging service set up with a third-party vendor, separate from their voice provider, messaging may have to be acquired separately.
• Toll-free numbers: The end user’s messaging service may be provisioned with a third-party provider through a separate carrier from the voice service. In this case, transferring messaging will be a separate order from the port that moves voice service to Bandwidth.

Note: If you’re migrating full number inventories, it’s possible in some cases to coordinate the release of messaging to coincide with the port, though not guaranteed. In most cases, the messaging service will continue to work through the current provider even after the port completes, until messaging services are fully transferred to Bandwidth. 

Transferring messaging services via Hosted Messaging

Hosted Messaging offers you the option to provision messaging services through Bandwidth while leaving the voice service in place with the current provider. Whether you’re provisioning 10DLC or toll-free numbers for hosted messaging, here are some important factors to take into account:

• After adding a telephone number (TN) for Hosted Messaging in the Bandwidth App, we recommend creating a TN options subscription to receive order status updates to ensure that the TN has been updated successfully. You may also want to test the TN to ensure messaging works as intended.
• If the TN test is unsuccessful, please open a ticket with the Bandwidth Messaging Support Team and include an LOA so that we may begin to investigate and remediate the issue.