[VoiceOps] Players in the US SMS Game / Market

[Peter Beckman]

Hey Calvin --

Left you a VM today in hopes you would know more than I about this!

I applied / appealed to TCR for a P2P use case exception for our consumer
traffic. I implemented many/most of the CTIA Best Practices for P2P traffic
in code to automatically prevent a customer from signing up and using our
service to spam a few thousand people.

TCR approved our appeal finally in July 2021, though it took a few months.

But the thing that sucks is that there isn't really anything to it -- I
have an email from the CEO of TCR saying that our use case meets their P2P
requirements, and to "show the email" to our carriers as proof.

Very weird.

But it works.

We have P2P binds with Bandwidth, and Inteliquent required us to pay $750
for our own dedicated P2P NetNumber ID, but now we have it and all SMS is
routed through it, at least for IQ DIDs.

We have not talked to Bandwidth about routing ALL of our SMS through our
P2P NNID, but we might, as currently we are sharing the Bandwidth P2P NNID
with who knows how many other customers, and if they get blocked, we get
blocked.

P2P is NOT treated as "high priority" by either carrier; we had a recent
issue where Outbound BW DIDs could not reach VZW. I'm still investigating
what entity broke it and why and how and hoping they fix it. I'll be adding
some monitoring around it soon so I know when it breaks before our
customers.

Hope that helps.

Beckman
+1 571 527 2972 if you wanna chat about it

On Wed, 8 Feb 2023, Calvin E. via VoiceOps wrote:

> I second this request for clarification on the state of messaging today.
> I'm specifically interested in P2P binds for true consumer traffic and
> keeping my customers away from the campaign registry.
>
> On Wed, Feb 8, 2023 at 3:25 PM Peter Beckman via VoiceOps <
> voiceops at voiceops.org> wrote:
>
>> I built and ran operations for a Ringtone company back in 2004-2005, so I
>> have some experience with SMSCs, DLRs, and how SMS generally works.
>>
>> However, over the years, there seems to be a lot of different players in
>> the game, some aggregators, some called something else, and honestly I
>> cannot seem to find any good, well-written, recent information on how and
>> where SMS messages flow in the US.
>>
>> The players I am talking about are NOT the Tier 0 carriers (e.g. Verizon
>> Wireless, T-Mobile, AT&T, US Mobile), and not the CLECs/ILECs we all might
>> work
>> with (Level3, Bandwidth, Inteliquent/Sinch).
>>
>> I'm looking for what companies/vendors might touch SMS messaging that runs
>> between the 3 major US Wireless networks (I believe THEY are all
>> interconnected directly, but maybe not) and all the other SMS-enabled DIDs
>> and Short Codes that are outside of those wireless networks.
>>
>> Here are players I know about, but I do not know what they do
>> and what other carriers use these players and why:
>>
>>      - NetNumber
>>      - Syniverse
>>      - Neustar
>>      - SAP
>>      - Sybase
>>      - TNS
>>
>> Then we have the confusing SMS routing side: ESPID, AltSPID, VSPID,
>> NetNumberID.
>>
>> Back in 2015 a post to VoiceOps stated:
>>
>>         "Syniverse and SAP are working with NeuStar to make use of the
>> AltSPID field
>>         in NPAC for SMS routing as an alternative to NetNumber. This is
>> expected by
>>         the end of the year. If you have wireline number block assignments
>> which
>>         are SMS enabled, you may be facing a monthly per-number fee from
>> NetNumber
>>         come January 1st. I suggest anyone in this position contact their
>> SMS
>>         peering hub and the NPAC Helpdesk for more information."
>>
>>      https://puck.nether.net/pipermail/voiceops/2015-November/006074.html
>>
>> I run a few SMSCs and pass messages through them directly to my carriers.
>> With one carrier I use a shared NNID, and with another I have a
>> dedicated/hosted NNID.
>>
>> Here are my questions:
>>
>>      - How would one find out through which Vendors an SMS passes, in order
>>        to troubleshoot deliverability or receivability issues?
>>      - Does anyone what vendor/aggregator that Verizon Wireless uses?
>>      - Are the major US wireless carriers interconnected directly, or
>>        through yet another vendor?
>>      - Has NetNumberID won out over AltSPID?
>>      - Why would long code SMS messages NOT generate DLRs from the
>> receiving
>>        carrier through these SMS aggregators/vendors?
>>
>> I acknowledge my limited understanding of all the SMS players and the
>> technical functionality here. Any new knowledge is appreciated.
>>
>> Beckman
>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Peter Beckman                                                  Internet Guy
>> beckman at angryox.com
>> https://www.angryox.com/
>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> _______________________________________________
>> VoiceOps mailing list
>> VoiceOps at voiceops.org
>> https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
>>
>

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Peter Beckman                                                  Internet Guy
beckman at angryox.com                                https://www.angryox.com/
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