A legal business name may back only one brand across the whole registry

The requirementstatement

A legal business name already registered as a brand at TCR cannot be registered again, by anyone.

Severityseverity: BlockingBLOCKINGBreaking this rule gets the submission rejected. There is no partial credit.
When it bitesphase: Gates approvalapprovalGet this wrong and the brand or campaign is refused at registration.
What is checkedobject: brand.company_name
Where it liveslayer: BrandBRAND
How Ekas settles itdetectability: External recordEXTERNAL_DATA; The fact that settles it lives in a register we cannot query, such as the IRS file, a postal database, or another provider’s tenant. Reported as a warning with the evidence to check, not as a pass.
What the fix involvesfailureClass: Wait on someone elseTERMINAL_EXTERNAL; Needs an external system or a waiting period, such as IRS propagation, a vetting result, or a carrier queue.
Who requires itauthorities: TwilioTCR
When it appliesapplicabilityText: Applies to every 10DLC registration.

Why this rule existsrationale

Brand uniqueness is registry-wide, not per account: if another CSP has already registered this business, the second submission collides with a record neither you nor the customer can see. Agencies hit this constantly when a client registered themselves first, or moved between platforms and left the old brand behind, and the rejection names a duplicate the customer will swear does not exist.

How to fix itremediation

Ask the customer whether they have ever registered 10DLC before, with anyone — including a previous agency or a platform they no longer use. If they have, the existing brand must be released or shared rather than duplicated; contact the CSP that holds it. Done when either no prior brand exists or the existing one has been transferred to you.

Provider rejection codescodes

The code you get back when this rule is what failed, and whether that provider lets you resubmit.

Provider	Code	Resubmit
Twilio	30703	Yes

Check this yourselfattestation

No tool can settle this one for you. Here is the check, and what wrong looks like.

Has this business ever registered a 10DLC brand before, with anyone — including a former agency or a platform it no longer uses?

1Ask the customer directly who has sent SMS on their behalf in the past, not whether they have a brand. A forgotten registration from a previous vendor is the usual cause.
2Where a prior brand exists, contact the CSP holding it to release or share it rather than registering a second one.

What wrong looks like: The submission is refused as a duplicate of a brand the customer will swear does not exist, because it was created by an agency they parted with two years ago and it is invisible to both of you.

Notesnotes

Off-platform: the duplicate lives in TCR, which we cannot query. The user has to establish for themselves whether the business has an existing brand — the reliable way is to ask the customer directly who has previously sent SMS on their behalf, since a forgotten registration from a former vendor is the usual cause. Do not resubmit hoping for a different answer; the check is exact and repeatable.

Rules you will hit next

6 other rules read brand.company_name. Fixing one field to satisfy a single rule is how a resubmission trades one rejection for another, so read these before you change anything.

BRD-001A legal company name is required for every entity but a sole proprietorBlockingBLOCKING BRD-003Legal name must carry its exact entity suffix as filedBlockingBLOCKING BRD-008Legal name must not carry an appended personal name or roleBlockingBLOCKING BRD-068Sole proprietor brand name must be a person, not a companyBlockingBLOCKING BRD-160Register the message sender, not the agency or platformBlockingBLOCKING BRD-006Submit every name line above the address on a multi-line IRS recordHighHIGH

All brand rules

BRD-011 is one of 196 brand rules in the 915-rule 10DLC registry. Free to cite under CC BY 4.0.