# OPS-046 — The honouring clock starts when the revocation arrives

> The time taken to honour a revocation is measured from receipt of the revocation, not from the confirmation, and must never exceed ten business days.

- **Rule ID:** OPS-046
- **Layer:** Operational (`OPERATIONAL`)
- **Checks:** `suppression latency, measured from receipt`
- **Severity:** BLOCKING — Breaking this rule gets the submission rejected outright.
- **When it bites:** Falls due after approval, once you are live and sending
- **How it is detected:** Not knowable before submission — reported with its deadline
- **Fix type:** Wait on an external system or a required interval
- **Required by:** FCC
- **Applies:** Applies to every 10DLC registration.
- **Canonical URL:** https://ekas.io/rules/10dlc/operational/ops-046/

## Why this rule exists

Ten business days is the outer federal limit, and it is not a target — anything a platform can do instantly it must do instantly. The anchor matters because the obvious instrumentation measures from the confirmation being sent, which hides any delay in recognising the revocation at all: a message that sat unread in an inbox for a week shows as zero elapsed time on that clock.

## How to fix it

Timestamp the revocation when it arrives, not when it is processed, and report the gap between that and suppression. Done when your own reporting would show a revocation that waited three days in a queue.

## Example of a compliant value

```text
Opt-out record: received_at 2026-03-04T09:12Z, suppressed_at 2026-03-04T09:12Z, channel=SMS.
```

## Check this yourself

**Would your own reporting show a revocation that sat unread in a queue for three days?**

1. Check which timestamp the platform records — many record only the suppression, which makes the obligation unmeasurable in your own data.
2. Timestamp the revocation on arrival, and report the gap between that and suppression.
3. Ten business days is the outer federal limit, not a target.

*What wrong looks like:* The instrumentation measures from the confirmation being sent, so a message that waited a week in an inbox shows as zero elapsed time.

## Notes

A measurement across two runtime events. What the user has to check is which timestamp their platform records — many record only the suppression, which makes the obligation unmeasurable in their own data. OPS-056 covers the record this depends on.