Do not burn numbers and replace them

JSONMarkdown

The requirementstatement

Numbers must not be cycled — used until deliverability degrades and then discarded, or freshly provisioned to escape a suspension.

Severityseverity
BlockingBLOCKINGBreaking this rule gets the submission rejected. There is no partial credit.
When it bitesphase
After you are livepostFalls due once you are sending: STOP handling, quiet hours, suppression, record retention.
What is checkedobject
number provisioning and retirement pattern
Where it liveslayer
OperationalOPERATIONAL
How Ekas settles itdetectability
Post-submissionUNDETECTABLE_PRE_SUBMISSION
The subject does not exist yet at submission time: a reply window, an expiring PIN, a queue position. Reported with its deadline.
What the fix involvesfailureClass
Hard stopHARD_STOP
Not remediable. Resubmitting will not help, and anyone offering to fix it is selling you a rejection.
Who requires itauthorities
T-MobileVonagePlivoTelnyx
When it appliesapplicabilityText
Applies to every 10DLC registration.

Why this rule existsrationale

A number whose delivery is falling is telling you something about the traffic, and replacing it discards the signal rather than the cause. Carriers treat the pattern as deliberate because it is the standard playbook of senders who intend to keep sending regardless — and provisioning a new number while a suspension is open escalates from a campaign problem to an account one.

How to fix itremediation

Treat degrading delivery as a content or consent problem and fix that. Keep the number: recovering its reputation is slow but possible, and a fresh number inherits the same traffic and degrades the same way.

Check this yourselfattestation

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

What has your number churn been over the last quarter — how many numbers were retired and replaced?

  1. 1Pull the provisioning history and count retirements. A pattern nobody planned, emerging from individually reasonable decisions, is the usual finding.
  2. 2For each retirement, ask what prompted it. Falling delivery is a content or consent signal, not a number fault.
  3. 3Never provision a fresh number while a suspension is open — that escalates a campaign problem to an account one.

What wrong looks like: The number is discarded and the traffic that degraded it is not, so the replacement inherits the same content and degrades the same way. Carriers read the pattern as the standard playbook of senders who intend to keep sending regardless.

Notesnotes

Visible only in provisioning history over time. What the user has to look at is their own number churn over the last quarter — a pattern nobody planned but that has emerged from individual reasonable decisions is the usual finding.

Rules you will hit next

Other operational rules at the same severity. A registration is judged as a whole, not rule by rule.

OPS-026The universal opt-out keyword set must be declaredBlockingBLOCKINGOPS-027Opt-out keyword handling must be declared, not assumedBlockingBLOCKINGOPS-029A revocation must survive punctuation, case and surrounding wordsBlockingBLOCKINGOPS-031A plainly-worded opt-out counts even with no keyword in itBlockingBLOCKINGOPS-033STOP must never come back as an errorBlockingBLOCKINGOPS-037On a shared address, STOP must stop everythingBlockingBLOCKING

All operational rules

OPS-137 is one of 139 operational rules in the 915-rule 10DLC registry. Free to cite under CC BY 4.0.

Reading the rules is the easy part.

Ekas runs every rule that gates approval, 823 of these 915, against your registration before it reaches the carrier. It reads your site, your policy pages and your opt-in the way a reviewer would, and hands you the fix, not just the verdict.

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