Grey routes are not a price advantage

The requirementstatement

A2P traffic must not be carried over any path or setting not authorised by the service providers for non-consumer messaging.

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: termination path for A2P traffic
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: CTIAT-Mobileall MNOs
When it appliesapplicabilityText: Applies to every 10DLC registration.

Why this rule existsrationale

A grey route is a path that delivers commercial traffic through consumer-priced channels, and the carriers price it per message once they detect it — at ten dollars a message on at least one network, which turns a saving into a bill nobody budgeted. Senders rarely choose one knowingly: it arrives as a cheap termination option from an intermediary, or as the output of a least-cost router.

How to fix itremediation

Send A2P traffic only over the authorised A2P path your provider registers for the campaign, and refuse termination offers priced materially below the market. Ask your provider, in writing, which route your traffic takes.

Check this yourselfattestation

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

Has your provider confirmed in writing which route your A2P traffic takes — and does your per-message price look like the going rate?

1Ask for the route in writing. Senders rarely choose a grey route knowingly: it arrives as a cheap termination option or as the output of a least-cost router.
2Compare your per-message price against the market. An unexplained discount is the signal.
3Refuse termination offers priced materially below it.

What wrong looks like: The answer arrives as a surcharge rather than a rejection — up to ten dollars a message on at least one network, which turns the saving into a bill nobody budgeted.

Notesnotes

A network path we cannot see. What the user has to do is ask their provider to confirm the route in writing and compare their per-message price against the going rate — an unexplained discount is the signal, and the answer arrives as a surcharge rather than as a rejection.

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 declaredBlockingBLOCKING OPS-027Opt-out keyword handling must be declared, not assumedBlockingBLOCKING OPS-029A revocation must survive punctuation, case and surrounding wordsBlockingBLOCKING OPS-031A plainly-worded opt-out counts even with no keyword in itBlockingBLOCKING OPS-033STOP must never come back as an errorBlockingBLOCKING OPS-037On a shared address, STOP must stop everythingBlockingBLOCKING

All operational rules

OPS-140 is one of 139 operational rules in the 915-rule 10DLC registry. Free to cite under CC BY 4.0.