Business phone services now require registration for text messaging

If you use a mobile app for your business phone service (like RingCentral, Zoom, or Dialpad), you may be used to sending SMS text messages to your contacts. New carrier regulations now restrict business SMS until your organization is approved to send it.

What's really going on

Mobile carriers are receiving more and more SMS messages from businesses. To add accountability, they now require every business SMS user to register with The Campaign Registry (TCR) to confirm compliance. These requirements apply to all businesses sending or receiving SMS from standard 10-digit phone numbers.

Carriers are already enforcing this:

• Zoom has begun disabling SMS for non-compliant senders.
• RingCentral has started notifying customers that it will triple the cost for unregistered SMS delivery.

For any client who uses SMS with a business phone, registration is now required. If you use Zoom, RingCentral, or any other Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone system with SMS, your organization needs to register as a "brand" with TCR and register at least one "campaign" tied to your organization's phone numbers.

What you should do

If this change affects you, reach out to Macktez to discuss next steps and keep the impact on your workflow to a minimum.

If your business uses VoIP service with physical desk phones rather than mobile apps, you won't notice any changes, since you weren't using SMS to begin with. We still recommend completing the registration process in case you switch to mobile phones later and want to use SMS.