10DLC
The US carrier framework for sending registered application-to-person SMS from a 10-digit local number.
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The US carrier framework for sending registered application-to-person SMS from a 10-digit local number.
10DLC stands for 10-Digit Long Code. It is the system US carriers introduced to allow businesses to send application-to-person (A2P) messaging from ordinary local numbers rather than short codes.
Before 10DLC, businesses routinely sent bulk messages from unregistered long codes, which carriers treated as suspicious and filtered aggressively. Under 10DLC, a business registers its brand and each messaging campaign, receives a trust score, and gets assigned throughput limits accordingly.
Registration affects deliverability directly. Unregistered traffic on a long code is heavily filtered or blocked outright. Sending to landlines or invalid numbers also damages a sender reputation, which is a practical reason to validate a list before a campaign rather than after.
Related terms
- A2P messaging — Application-to-person SMS — messages sent by software to a person, rather than between two people.
- Short code — A five- or six-digit number leased for high-volume, carrier-approved SMS campaigns.
- SMS deliverability — The proportion of sent SMS messages that are actually delivered to a recipient handset.