A2P 10DLC
A2P 10DLC stands for Application-to-Person, 10-Digit Long Code: the US carrier registration system for business text messages sent from a regular local phone number. A business registers its brand and each messaging use case with the carriers before it sends, and traffic from an unregistered local number is filtered, delayed, or blocked.
Why it matters for a service company
Most shops text customers from a local number without thinking about it: an appointment confirmation, a note that the technician is on the way, a request for a photo of the panel. Once that texting runs through software instead of a technician’s own phone, the carriers treat it as application traffic. They expect the sending number to be registered to a real business with a stated use case and sample messages, and they score every message against that registration.
The registration asks for the legal business name, the tax ID, a website, the kind of messages you send, and how a customer agrees to receive them. A shop that skips it does not get a warning. Its confirmations simply stop arriving, and the first sign is a customer who says nobody told them the arrival window.
Consent is the other half. The Telephone Consumer Protection Act and the carrier rules both expect the customer to have agreed to texts, and every message needs a way to opt out. Carrier requirements change and vary with message volume, so confirm your own setup with counsel or your messaging provider rather than relying on a summary.
How DispatchLine handles it
DispatchLine does not text from your local number, so you do not file a 10DLC brand or campaign registration for it. Confirmations go out from one shared DispatchLine messaging number that names your business in the message. That number is toll-free, and toll-free numbers go through toll-free verification instead of the 10DLC process.
That verification is approved, so texting works on every account from day one. The agent texts only callers who said yes when it asked on the call, every text it sends carries an opt-out instruction, and a caller who declines still gets the job booked in an arrival window on your board. Optional text alerts to you as the owner need your own separate opt-in.
The consent language and opt-out wording are set out in the DispatchLine SMS terms, and the SMS compliance guide walks through what the carriers check.
Related terms
New field guides by email
Guides for home-service businesses on answering calls, call triage and after-hours coverage: the title, a short summary and a link for up to six of the newest guides on this site. At most one email every 30 days.