Messaging Glossary of Terms

These are terms, acronyms, definitions, and explanations of some of the terms relating to A2P/10DLC and Toll-Free Messaging Compliance. The definitions provided should be understood in the context of A2P/10DLC and Toll-Free Messaging Compliance.

10DLC – 10-digit Long Code, also referred to as a local area code. 

Blacklisting – Numbers which have sent repeated known spam/unwanted content are subject to automatic blacklisting without notification for up to 30 days. Multiple or repeat offenses may result in permanent blacklisting. Additionally, numbers which have been reported by industry partners for spam/unwanted content may also be subject to permanent blacklisting. 

Brand – A company entity representing an organization, such as a logo.

Bad Actor/Good Actor – A bad actor is typically an entity that spams messages, or otherwise, sends invalid content that violates guidelines that can lead to a Campaign being suspended. A good actor is ideal, as they do not violate guidelines, and therefore do not incur a suspension.

Campaign – A specific situation in which a product/service can be used, also referred to as a ‘Use Case’. Examples include 2FA (Two-factor authentication), Marketing, Security Alert, Social, Political, and more.

Consumer – An individual person who subscribes to specific wireless messaging services or messaging applications. Consumers do not include agents of businesses, organizations, or entities which send messages to consumers. Consumers are natural persons with uniquely assigned phone numbers (long codes i.e. local phone numbers) which can be dialed. 

Consumer Person-to-Person (P2P) – Consumer (P2P) messaging is sent by a consumer to one or more consumers and is consistent with typical consumer operation (i.e., message exchanges are consistent with conversational messaging among consumers). Some consumers utilize automation to assist in responding to communications. For example, a consumer may direct their messaging service to auto reply to a phone call in order to inform the caller about the consumer’s status (e.g., “I’m busy” or  “Driving now, can’t talk”). Such use of automation to assist consumers in their composition and sending of messages falls within the attributes of typical consumer operation. In contrast, automation in whole or in part used by non-consumers to facilitate messaging is not a typical consumer operation. 

CSP – Campaign Service Provider, also known as Reseller.

Fingerprinting – The process of extracting data points from identified spam content is known as  “fingerprinting”. Once message content has been fingerprinted as spam, all content found to be correlated to that fingerprint will be blocked in the future. Fingerprints do not expire or age out of existence. 

MM4 – MM4 is a 3GPP protocol for MMS service which covers the routing of an MMS from an originator  MMS relay/server to a recipient MMS relay/server. MM4 is based on SMTP (email) protocol. MM4 is an extension of Internet simple mail transport protocol (SMTP) according to STD 10 (RFC 2821). 

MNO – Mobile Network Operator, a mobile operator that provides connectivity to end-users.

Multimedia Message Service (MMS) – Facilitates group messaging and allows for the exchange of multimedia content between mobile devices including video, pictures, and audio. 

Non-Consumer – A business, organization, or entity which uses messaging to communicate with consumers. Examples may include but are not limited to, large-to-small businesses, financial institutions, schools, medical practices, customer service entities, non-profit organizations, and political campaigns. 

Non-Consumer Application-to-Person (A2P) – Messages sent from an application, typically web-based,  to a mobile subscriber. Some common use cases include two-factor authentication (2FA), travel notifications, banking alerts, or marketing messages. A2P delivery methods are either via toll-free messaging service or soon to be implemented 10DLC (10-digit long code). 

REST API – Application programming interface (API) used to establish messaging connectivity for sending and receiving messages and other service-related access. 

Short Message Service (SMS) – Commonly known as “text messaging” is a service for sending and receiving messages of up to 160 characters to mobile devices. Longer messages will be fragmented into smaller message fragments. Maximum character length per message fragment varies depending on the character set used in the body of the message, whether GSM default alphabet or Unicode.  

Short Message Peer-to-Peer (SMPP) – SMPP is an open, industry-standard Internet protocol designed to provide a flexible data communication interface for the transfer of SMS messages between external short messaging entities (ESME), routing entities (RE), and short message service centers (SMSC).

TCR – The Campaign Registry, an organization that will assess the trust score assigned to each brand and passes that information along to carriers.

Toll-Free Messaging Verification Process – The toll-free verification process qualifies messaging traffic to be tagged as verified with our downstream peers (not directly with mobile operators). The approved tag reduces the number of false-positive blocks and helps increase the message deliverability on a single toll-free number (TFN).

Unwanted Messages – May include, but are not limited to, unsolicited bulk commercial messages (i.e.,  spam); “phishing” messages intended to access private or confidential information through deception;  other forms of abusive, harmful, malicious, unlawful, or otherwise inappropriate messages; and  messages which require an opt-in but did not obtain such opt-in (or such opt-in was revoked