What is P2P and A2P Messaging?
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Category |
About |
Attributes (per number) |
Common use cases |
P2P - Conversational Person to Person |
Typically, this is the conventional conversational two-way SMS or MMS messaging between individuals. From CTIA best practices: “Person-to-Person (P2P) generally describes the low-volume exchange of wireless messages between end users... the concept of consistent with typical human operation defines P2P traffic to distinguish P2P from A2P traffic.” |
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A2P - Automated message to Person |
One-way SMS to which recipients are not expected to reply. Typically this represents high volume messaging between businesses and individuals. Some common examples are a logistics company sending delivery statuses and notifications, a dentist’s office sending one-way alerts and reminders, or a financial institution sending PIN codes to individuals either using short codes or long codes. From CTIA best practices: “A2P traffic is all messaging that falls outside the definition of P2P (i.e., traffic that is not consistent with typical human operation).” |
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The major difference between the current P2P service that Bandwidth offers today on US and Canadian local 10-digit phone numbers and the A2P Messaging service using Toll-Free numbers (and soon on Long Codes) is:
- A2P formally allows TCPA compliant and opted-in use cases for many application-to-person use cases such as alerts, PIN codes, requested marketing, and automated, high-volume interactions between business/government and consumers.
- The 1 SMS/number/second message limits imposed in the guidelines for P2P messaging don't apply to A2P messaging services.
- The use of a A2P text messaging service requires formal approval by Bandwidth (and potentially carriers depending on the use case and company generating the outbound traffic).
- The A2P service is priced differently than P2P messaging services.
If your use case requires A2P messaging, please see our toll-free A2P use case best practices.
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