If your business is being blocked from sending SMS messages, then you could be out of compliance with carrier SMS registration requirements. On February 3, 2025, aggregators operating on behalf of US mobile carriers began enforcing the blocking of unregistered outbound SMS traffic. This blocking affects non-mobile originating business SMS providers across the industry.
Since 2022, mobile carriers have required businesses sending non-mobile originating SMS to register their brand and SMS use case (campaign). This includes completing registration through their service provider (CSP), meeting strict requirements set by mobile carriers and Direct Connect Aggregators (DCAs), and receiving approval from the mobile carriers to send messages to consumers on their mobile network. This registration requirement is part of the efforts being taken by the mobile carriers to prevent unwanted messaging.
Failure to comply with these requirements means that a business will have their SMS traffic blocked by mobile carriers or DCAs. Over the last several years, RingCentral has repeatedly notified customers via numerous channels, including through email, phone, in-person webinars, and notices posted on RingCentral properties (including in app) of the need to register to avoid having their SMS traffic blocked.
To assist customers with completing TCR registration and remediating oversubscribed campaigns, RingCentral set up a dedicated TCR/ SMS registration hotline, which has been available since February 2023. Customers can call this hotline (1-888-898-4591, Option 3, Option 1) for extra support with registration and remediation. RingCentral has also worked with upstream providers to ensure that while outbound SMS is blocked, inbound messages will continue to be received by RingCentral’s customers.
A portion of RingCentral customers - approximately 8,100 accounts - have not completed TCR registration requirements, and are now being impacted. Currently, there are approximately 2,000 customer accounts out of the 8,100 that are in process of being self-registered, which is something RingCentral is unable to do on behalf of customers.
Approximately 1,300 customers who have registered campaigns have been impacted by the carrier imposed 49-number cap applied to standard campaigns. Customers who have more than 49 numbers in a campaign were advised of the actions needed to become compliant beginning in May 2024. Customers who have not yet received a Number Pool but have more than 49 numbers in a campaign will need to take corrective action.
In addition, a small number of RingCentral customers experienced issues with numbers being improperly associated with approved SMS campaigns. This is not due to an outage, but due to a technical issue that has since been identified. RingCentral has communicated with impacted customers and provided a workaround to help customers to resolve the issue. All remaining affected numbers are expected to be re-provisioned with the underlying DCA within 72 hours. Customers may visit status.ringcentral.com for additional information, immediate actions they may take, as well as update on the status of reprovisioning.
The majority of RingCentral customers who have completed the carrier required registration process are fully provisioned and able to take advantage of RingCentral’s SMS capabilities, - including the ability to send and receive SMS/MMS - use SMS for notifications, build SMS automations and programmatic SMS communications, and use SMS for marketing purposes with the appropriate campaign.
RingCentral is proud to be one of the few UCaaS providers that allows for low volume and standard campaigns across numerous use cases to be registered, as well as providing the largest number of SMS integrations enabling customers to seamlessly integrate SMS capabilities into their CRMs, ecommerce flows, appointment scheduling, productivity tools, websites, and more.
Customers may visit support.ringcentral.com/sms-registration for more information on this carrier required registration.
*Update as of February 10, 2025: As of February 10, the number of customer accounts that are unregistered for the TCR requirement stands at around 9000. In addition, around 1400 accounts are impacted by the carrier imposed 49-number cap.