Products · 10DLC
Every US business text passes through carrier registration: a brand, a campaign, and a manual review most senders don’t expect. This page shows how each step works and what it costs, and where Ekas gets you cleared on the first try.
Ekas fixes your registration before you submit it.
SMS consent checkbox
Yes, sign me up for texts and deals.
RejectedNo opt-out, no rate disclosure, no brand name.
I agree to receive recurring marketing texts from Northwind. Msg & data rates may apply. Reply STOP to opt out. Privacy Policy
ApprovedEkas catches the first and hands you the second before you submit.
10DLC is a gate the carriers run, and getting it wrong gets your messages blocked. The four numbers below show what’s at stake.
100%
of unregistered A2P texting is now blocked by AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon.
Carrier policy, in force since Feb 2025
1–4 wks
of carrier review before a new campaign is cleared to send.
The Campaign Registry
~30
official carrier rejection reasons, grouped into 7 categories.
Bandwidth & Telnyx DCA reason codes
100×
gap in daily volume between the lowest and highest trust tiers.
T-Mobile brand daily caps
By industry estimates, the registry holds around 4 million brands against roughly 2.8 million live campaigns, a gap that shows how many businesses register and never finish clearing one. No official total is published.
10DLC is a carrier program, not a government mandate. It enforces real law like the TCPA and CAN-SPAM, plus the industry’s own messaging rules. Knowing who makes each decision saves you weeks.
You, or your customer
The business the recipient believes is texting them. Any business that sends A2P messages has to register, whether that is one text or millions.
The platform that registers
The Campaign Service Provider files brands and campaigns into the registry. If you send on behalf of customers, this role is yours.
Stores records, approves nothing
Every brand and campaign lands here. The registry stores them and bills for them, and it approves nothing and rejects nothing. Most people assume the opposite.
Aegis & WMC Global
They score each brand’s trust from 0 to 100. That score sets how fast and how much you can send, regardless of what you intend to do.
The real gatekeepers
Direct Connect Aggregators hold the carrier gateways and run the mandatory manual review of every campaign. AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon write the rules and enforce them by blocking and fining.
The finish line
A message reaches a phone only after the brand, the campaign and the vetting have all cleared. Plenty of registered senders still don’t get delivered.
Three steps stand between you and a sent message. Filing each is quick; clearing them on the first pass is where weeks disappear.
Step 1
You submit the legal business identity, and the registry checks it against tax records. The brand gets a trust score from 0 to 100 that follows it everywhere it sends.
What it takes
Where it fails
Most brands that fail, fail here: the legal name and EIN don’t match tax records. One wrong character, or a stale address, is enough.
Step 2
A campaign covers one use case, like marketing, 2FA, or notifications. You describe how you’ll text and prove that recipients asked for it.
What it takes
Where it fails
Most rejections land here: a vague opt-in, samples that don’t match the use case, or a missing privacy policy.
Step 3
Every campaign gets a mandatory manual review at a DCA, and AT&T adds its own human review on top. This step catches the people who thought registration was the finish line.
What it takes
Where it fails
A rejection sends you back to edit and resubmit, which restarts the clock and re-charges the vetting fee. The registry even keeps a code for campaigns declined five or more times.
Underneath the jargon, reviewers want one thing: proof that real people asked for these messages. Every rejection reason falls into one of these seven categories.
The opt-in isn’t clear, isn’t shown where you collect consent, or promises something the messages don’t deliver.
The use case reads as vague, or it doesn’t match the sample messages you submitted.
Too few, too generic, or missing the opt-out line every sample should carry.
No working “Reply STOP to opt out,” or no HELP reply anywhere in the message flow.
No policy on a live site, or one that doesn’t say how numbers are used or confirm they aren’t shared.
SHAFT (sex, hate, alcohol, firearms, tobacco), plus cannabis, CBD, gambling, and payday lending.
Broken links, a website that doesn’t match the brand, or number-pool and throughput rules a submission quietly breaks.
Carriers publish around thirty rejection reasons that collapse into these seven categories. Even professionally managed registrations fail on the first pass about one time in ten, and the registry keeps a code for campaigns declined five or more times.
A text gets opened around 98% of the time, against roughly 20% for email, so throttling costs real reach. On T-Mobile, a brand’s daily ceiling runs from 2,000 messages to 200,000, set by that 0–100 score. External vetting is how you raise it.
AT&T meters throughput per minute using a similar message class, and Verizon filters on content instead of a fixed cap. A new, unvetted brand starts at the bottom tier, so vetting up matters the moment you send at volume.
10DLC pricing is a stack of separate fees from different parties. Separated out, they look like this.
Brand registration
One-time
External brand vetting
Raises your trust score; $95 for enhanced
Campaign registration
By use case; billed three months up front
Campaign vetting
Per submission, charged again on every resubmit
T-Mobile activation
One-time, per campaign
Carrier surcharge
Per segment, on top of your send rate
A small business, one campaign
One brand and one marketing campaign runs about $75–150 to get live, then roughly $10 a month plus per-message carrier fees. A sole-proprietor setup can start near $10–20.
The cost of getting it wrong
Unregistered messages fail, and they cost more along the way. AT&T charges 3.3× as much ($0.010 vs $0.003 a segment), and T-Mobile fines non-compliant content up to $2,000 per violation.
Ekas gives you the check the carriers don’t. It reads the full registration, flags what would be rejected, and hands back the fix before you submit.
Ekas reviews the brand, the website, the consent flow and the sample messages up front, and flags what will fail before a carrier sees it.
The name-and-EIN check that sinks most brands is the first thing Ekas verifies, against the record carriers actually use.
You get the exact change to make, like “add this opt-in line” or “link a privacy policy,” instead of a rejection code weeks later.
The seven things carriers reject for are the seven things Ekas checks before you go in.
If you follow the fixes and still get rejected, it doesn’t count against your quota, and Ekas covers the provider’s registration fee.
Keep sending the way you do today. Ekas runs as the compliance layer above your provider, or as a standalone pre-submission check.
Works with your provider
Keep sending the way you do today. Ekas sits on top as the compliance layer, or runs as a standalone pre-submission check.
Most business messaging starts on 10DLC. The same verify-and-fix engine covers the other channels too.
Not a government one. It’s a carrier program (AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon) that enforces existing law like the TCPA. It’s effectively mandatory anyway: since February 2025 the carriers block essentially all unregistered A2P traffic.
No. The registry approves nothing, so your campaign still has to pass manual carrier vetting, and low-trust brands get throttled. Registration makes you eligible to send, not guaranteed to land.
Brand registration can be near-instant. Campaigns take one to four weeks of carrier review, and every rejection restarts that clock. Ekas exists to get you through on the first submission, so you skip the loop.
Yes. Keep whoever you send with. Ekas is the compliance layer on top, verifying and fixing registrations before they go in. We work with Twilio, Bandwidth, Telnyx, Sinch, Infobip, Plivo and Bird, or run as a standalone pre-submission check while you send however you like.
Around $75–150 to get a typical small business live, then about $10 a month plus per-message carrier fees. The full breakdown is above, and Ekas’s own plan is on the pricing page.
If you followed the fixes Ekas gave you, that rejection doesn’t count against your quota and we cover the provider’s registration fee.
Still have questions? Talk to us
Tell us how you send today, and we’ll show you where your registrations would fail and how Ekas fixes them before they reach the carrier.
See the full plan on pricing.