10DLC (or 10 digit long code number registration) is a channel created by mobile carriers for business-to-consumer messaging (also known as A2P or application to person messaging) where businesses can use a local landline phone number to text customers. In an optometry practice, this usually occurs when a third party like Weave or Solution Reach sends texts to patients on your behalf.
Because texting over local landline phone numbers has grown increasingly popular over the past few years, U.S. carriers want to make sure it stays that way – a channel customers can trust, that’s free of spam and unsolicited communications.
To accomplish that goal, carriers have together adopted a set of standards and registration processes for 10DLC numbers to better understand who is using 10DLC for A2P and what they’re sending across the network. Businesses are then vetted and given a “trust score” that determines the number of messages they can send per day through their carrier. In addition to protecting consumers, controlling message quotas in this way allows the carriers to increase message speed and offer businesses better deliverability.
If a business decides not to register their brand and continues using their 10DLC phone number, they will eventually experience disruption of service. Certain carriers will stop supporting SMS traffic from 10DLC numbers that are unregistered, meaning messages to customers on that carrier will fail and the sender will receive an error message.
This would likely only affect you if they are using an application to person (A2P) service like Weave or Solution Reach. And even in that case, the service provider (Weave or Solution Reach) would handle the registration of the 10DLC.
