Transferring Your SMS Short Codes – How To Do It with Ease
If the thought of transferring your short codes to a new A2P aggregator or messaging solutions provider feels a bit daunting, you’re not alone.
Many businesses have heard about the paperwork-heavy processes and the risks of downtime and messages going missing.
But have no fear.
Your migration process should run like clockwork – with no lost messages, no downtime, and no uncertainty. You just need experts alongside you to help.
The obstacles
Transferring short-codes can be painstaking processes because US carriers are obsessively careful about protecting their networks from spam. (Short codes can be potent spamming weapons thanks to their ability to send hundreds, and even over a thousand, messages a second.)
Now factor in the various parties involved in a migration:
- You (the business that owns the short code).
- Your former aggregator.
- Your new aggregator.
- The various mobile carriers that serve your customers (all of whom have different migration processes).
It follows that migrations need plenty of coordination.
The carriers follow different migration processes and complete migrations at different speeds. So for a period of a few weeks after pushing the button on a migration, your messaging traffic could be traveling through two aggregators.
That’s where expert help comes in.
Make sure you’re moving to a leading messaging solutions provider that has close relationships with major carriers, and established migration processes in place.
Carrier intimacy
The value of these close relationships can’t be underestimated. Very few messaging solution providers have direct lines of communication and long-established processes with all the major US carriers. (Infobip does, which is why many other A2P providers and aggregators use us to do short-code migrations for them).
Having an open line to a carrier means problems can be sorted quickly. If the carrier has some queries about a short-code program, they just pick up the phone or ping an email. This tends not to happen if the carrier-provider relationships aren’t in place – leading to delays and failures.
An established mobile solutions provider should take a pivotal role in the migration. It should be the expert, the conduit and the facilitator – keeping things smooth and simple.
So if you’re looking to switch providers, and you have short codes you need to keep hold of, find out how potential providers run the migration process:
- Do they tell you how long it’s likely to take – and how does this compare to other providers?
- Do they have close relationships with the US carriers?
- What tools and processes do they have in place to ensure messages aren’t lost in the ether during the handover period?
- Do they have support teams on hand to help you fill in the required documentation and guide you along the right path?
That’s a good checklist to follow. But if you’d like to find out what a perfect migration should look like, download this quick guide, Migrating US short codes – the easy way.
