Communications Platforms Glossary · Hosting & Cloud

10DLC (A2P ten-digit long code): registration for application-to-person texting from ordinary local numbers, in which every sender registers a brand and a campaign before carriers accept its traffic (Business Texting Registration).
8-bit data encoding: the SMS encoding for binary payloads, 140 octets in a single segment and 134 per concatenated segment, rare in application-to-person traffic (Sending a Text).
911 for VoIP: the duty of interconnected VoIP to carry emergency calls with a location dispatchers can use, which a platform meets by validating an emergency address when it is set, not when the call is made (911, CPNI & Telecom Duties).
Account-level thresholds: pausing a whole customer account when its bounce or complaint rate crosses a limit; simple, but a broadcast problem then stops password resets (Inbox Rules).
Aging (phone numbers): the rest a released number takes before returning to inventory, so calls, texts and reputation meant for the last holder fade first; the period is a published rule per number type (Phone Numbers & Porting).
Alphanumeric sender ID: a brand name of up to 11 letters, digits and spaces shown as the sender of a one-way text, registered in advance in many countries and not supported in the US (WhatsApp & Messaging Apps).
Apple Messages for Business: Apple's business chat in the Messages app, reached only through an Apple-approved Messaging Service Provider, in which the business may only reply to a conversation the customer started (WhatsApp & Messaging Apps).
Attestation (A, B, C): the STIR/SHAKEN level an originating provider signs onto a call: A (full) when it knows the customer and the customer's right to the number, B (partial) when it knows only the customer, C (gateway) when it can't authenticate the source (Voice Platforms).
Authentication+: The Campaign Registry's check that the person registering a brand actually controls it, billed per attempt including failed ones (Business Texting Registration).
Authentication-international rate: Meta's higher price for authentication messages sent by a business based in another country to users in listed markets, once it passes 750,000 qualifying messages in 30 days (WhatsApp & Messaging Apps).
BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message Identification): the standard that shows a sender's logo next to authenticated mail, requiring DMARC at enforcement, a VMC or CMC certificate and an SVG Tiny PS logo (Inbox Rules).
Blocklist (email): a list of IPs and domains that many receivers consult, such as Spamhaus's SBL, XBL, CSS, PBL, ZEN and DBL; a listing of a shared IP blocks every customer on it (Inbox Rules).
Blocks (email): a third delivery outcome, distinct from hard and soft bounces, caused by the sender's own authentication or reputation; a block never creates a suppression of the recipient's address (Email Sending Platforms).
Brand (10DLC): the registration record of who is sending, tied to a tax identity, legal name, address, website and entity type, under which campaigns and numbers sit (Business Texting Registration).
Branded calling: a verified name, logo and call reason added to the called party's display; for the provider it is a vetting workflow plus signing with extra claims, shown only on networks that have joined (Voice Platforms).
Bring your own number (hosted messaging): text-enabling a number whose voice service stays with its existing carrier, which needs the number owner's recorded authorization and no port (Phone Numbers & Porting).
Business portfolio (Meta): the business itself in Meta's hierarchy, above its WhatsApp Business Accounts and numbers, where business verification and the messaging limit are set (WhatsApp & Messaging Apps).
Call labeling: the "Spam Likely" style labels a terminating carrier and its analytics vendor attach to calls from patterns, complaints and attestation, which an originating provider can't buy its customers out of (Voice Platforms).
Campaign (10DLC): the registration record of what is sent: use case, description, sample messages, opt-in method, opt-out and help replies and content flags; each number belongs to one campaign at a time (Business Texting Registration).
The Campaign Registry (TCR): the registry through which 10DLC brands and campaigns are registered and vetted, part of the private regime run by carriers and written down in CTIA's guidelines (Business Texting Registration).
Campaign Service Provider (CSP): a platform registered with The Campaign Registry that submits its customers' brands and campaigns, its dashboard a front end for review queues it can't speed up (Business Texting Registration).
Carrier fee (pass-through): the recipient carrier's surcharge on each message, billed to the customer as a pass-through line that raises revenue and cost by the same amount and so lowers the margin percentage (The CPaaS Business).
carrier_fee_rules: the effective-dated table of carrier surcharges keyed by carrier, direction, number type, channel and registration status, so a new carrier fee shape is a row rather than code (The CPaaS Business).
carrier_limits: the throughput each carrier granted a brand or campaign at approval, stored as granted because the sender enforces those numbers, not the vetting score (Business Texting Registration).
Channel fallback: trying an app channel first and sending by SMS when it isn't delivered, which needs consent and registration for each channel and linked attempts to avoid double delivery (WhatsApp & Messaging Apps).
CMC (Common Mark Certificate): a BIMI certificate type that doesn't require a registered trademark, displayed without the verified checkmark Gmail shows for VMCs (Inbox Rules).
Contribution factor (USF): projected Universal Service program costs divided by projected contributable revenue, set quarterly and applied as a percentage of a provider's interstate and international end-user revenue (911, CPNI & Telecom Duties).
Conversion monitoring: tracking codes sent against codes verified per country and prefix, and throttling a destination for a customer when conversion falls, the main detector of SMS pumping (Telecom Fraud).
Country allowlist (geo permissions): sending texts or calls only to countries the customer serves, defaulting to the home country, the cheapest and most immediate control against pumping and revenue share fraud (Telecom Fraud).
CPaaS (communications platform as a service): a provider that rents phone numbers and carries texts, calls and email for other companies through an API, billed by the unit (The CPaaS Business).
CPNI (customer proprietary network information): what a carrier knows about a customer's use of its service (call detail records, numbers called, services subscribed), released only after authentication and certified as protected every year (911, CPNI & Telecom Duties).
CPNI annual certification: the compliance certificate an officer signs each year under 47 CFR 64.2009(e), stating the provider's procedures, actions against data brokers and a summary of complaints (911, CPNI & Telecom Duties).
Customer service window: the 24 hours after a user messages or calls a WhatsApp business, reset by each new message, during which free-form messages are allowed; outside it only approved templates (WhatsApp & Messaging Apps).
Dedicated IP (email): an IP that carries one sender's traffic, so its reputation is that sender's alone: better for a large consistent sender, worse for a small or irregular one that never builds history (Email Sending Platforms).
Deferral: a 4yz SMTP reply that slows a sender down; a rising deferral rate at one mailbox provider is the earliest sign of a reputation problem on an IP or domain (Inbox Rules).
Delivery receipt (DLR): the asynchronous report from a carrier or upstream of what happened to a message, sometimes per segment, sometimes late and occasionally never; kept raw and mapped to the platform's own codes (Sending a Text).
Destination prefix blocking: blocking number ranges that show fraud patterns across all customers, kept private because a published list tells fraudsters which ranges are open (Telecom Fraud).
Direct-connect aggregator: a CPaaS with contracts and SMPP or SIP connections to many carriers, giving breadth across countries and the ability to route around a failed or expensive carrier (The CPaaS Business).
DLT (India): the operators' registration platform under TRAI's rules, in which senders register as entities with headers, content templates and consent templates that every message must reference (WhatsApp & Messaging Apps).
DMARC at enforcement: a DMARC policy of p=quarantine or p=reject (Gmail also wants pct=100), the precondition for BIMI (Inbox Rules).
ESP (email service provider): a platform that sends email for other companies and whose product is reputation, pooled and divided across shared IPs, dedicated IPs, streams and onboarding (Email Sending Platforms).
Feedback loop: a mailbox provider's program that reports recipients' spam complaints back to the sender, such as Yahoo's Complaint Feedback Loop and Microsoft's JMRP; enrollments expire and need tracking (Inbox Rules).
Feedback-ID: the Gmail header that carries customer and campaign identifiers so Postmaster Tools can attribute complaint rates to them (Inbox Rules).
Firm Order Commitment (FOC): the losing provider's confirmation of a port date after validating a Local Service Request (Phone Numbers & Porting).
Form 499-A: the yearly FCC revenue report on which telecommunications and VoIP providers base Universal Service contributions (911, CPNI & Telecom Duties).
Free entry point window: the window of up to 7 days opened by the business's first reply to a user who arrived from a click-to-WhatsApp ad, in which Meta doesn't charge for marketing, utility, authentication or service messages (WhatsApp & Messaging Apps).
Google Business Messages: Google's business chat, whose Business Profile chat features ended on July 31, 2024, the category's example of an owner withdrawing a channel (WhatsApp & Messaging Apps).
Growth numbering: applying for more numbering resources, which needs a Months-to-Exhaust Worksheet of utilization by rate center and caps inventory per rate center (Phone Numbers & Porting).
GSM-7: the default SMS encoding, 160 characters in one segment and 153 per concatenated segment, used when every character is in the GSM 7-bit alphabet (Sending a Text).
Hard bounce: a permanent delivery failure (the address doesn't exist or will never accept mail, an SMTP 5yz for the recipient), which suppresses the address for the sender and counts toward its bounce rate (Email Sending Platforms).
HELP keyword: the inbound keyword the platform answers with the campaign's registered help text (Sending a Text).
Human Agent tag: Meta's tag letting a person at the business reply on Messenger or Instagram up to 7 days after the user's message, outside the standard 24-hour window (WhatsApp & Messaging Apps).
Ineligibility for mitigation: Gmail's refusal to help bulk senders above a spam-rate threshold fix delivery problems, the top rung of its enforcement ladder (Inbox Rules).
IP pool: a group of sending IPs (shared, dedicated or managed dedicated) for a traffic class; shared pools are tiered new, trusted and quarantine so one sender's problem doesn't spread (Email Sending Platforms).
IRSF (international revenue share fraud): the voice counterpart of SMS pumping: calls pumped to premium or high-cost numbers abroad whose termination revenue is shared with the fraudster (Telecom Fraud).
ISV model (texting): a software platform registering each of its customers as its own brand under one account, attesting for their details, with a number per customer because a number belongs to one campaign (Business Texting Registration).
JMRP (Junk Email Reporting Program): Microsoft's complaint feedback loop, part of SNDS, which reports when Outlook.com users mark a sender's mail as junk (Inbox Rules).
Kakao AlimTalk: Kakao's informational business messages, sent through official dealers on Kakao-approved templates, including to users who haven't added the channel (WhatsApp & Messaging Apps).
Kari's Law: the federal rule for multi-line telephone systems (offices, hotels, campuses, and hosted or cloud PBXs) requiring direct 911 dialing and notification (911, CPNI & Telecom Duties).
Local Service Request (LSR): the gaining provider's port request to the losing provider, validated against the customer's account and either confirmed with a date or rejected with a code (Phone Numbers & Porting).
Low-Volume Standard brand: a 10DLC brand type with a tax ID, up to five campaigns and a low daily cap on T-Mobile, for senders with small volumes (Business Texting Registration).
Mailbox provider: a receiver such as Gmail, Yahoo or Outlook.com that decides what reaches the inbox and judges an ESP's IPs and its customers' domains by everyone who sends through them (Email Sending Platforms).
Message lifecycle (SMS): accepted, queued, sent, delivered, and undelivered or failed, each status carrying the message ID and a sequence number so an older status can be discarded (Sending a Text).
Message stream: a separation of transactional and broadcast mail onto their own IP pools and suppression lists, as in Postmark's Message Streams, so marketing can't spoil receipts (Email Sending Platforms).
Message template (WhatsApp): a pre-registered message with placeholders, categorized as marketing, utility or authentication and reviewed by Meta, the only kind a business may send outside a customer service window (WhatsApp & Messaging Apps).
message_templates: the table of pre-registered messages across WhatsApp, Kakao AlimTalk and India's DLT, with the category in force and an append-only history of reviews and recategorizations (WhatsApp & Messaging Apps).
Messaging limit (WhatsApp): the number of unique users a business portfolio may reach outside customer service windows in a rolling 24 hours, from 250 up to unlimited (WhatsApp & Messaging Apps).
MLTS (multi-line telephone system): a phone system serving many lines in an office, hotel or campus, including the hosted and cloud PBXs a platform runs, covered by Kari's Law (911, CPNI & Telecom Duties).
NANP number: a ten-digit number in the North American Numbering Plan: a three-digit area code (NPA), a three-digit central office code (NXX) and a four-digit line number (Phone Numbers & Porting).
Non-fixed VoIP: service the user can move (a softphone, mobile app or laptop client), for which the provider must supply automated dispatchable location where technically feasible (911, CPNI & Telecom Duties).
Number lifecycle: available, reserved, assigned, ported out or released, aging, quarantined and returned; an assigned number is a held phone_number resource and inventory nobody holds lives in its own table (Phone Numbers & Porting).
Official Business Account: a WhatsApp business number shown with a blue checkmark beside its name (WhatsApp & Messaging Apps).
Onboarding and vetting (email): constraining who may send at all (a sandbox, a review, a daily cap) because an ESP's reputation is the sum of its customers' (Email Sending Platforms).
Opt-out at the platform: suppressing a recipient after STOP at the platform as a backstop, while still forwarding the message so the customer's consent ledger stays the system of record (Sending a Text).
Origination (voice): inbound calls to the customer's numbers arriving at the provider from the public network and sent to the customer's SIP endpoint or application (Voice Platforms).
Owned network: a CPaaS model holding carrier authorization, its own numbering, switches and interconnects, for lower cost per unit and control of porting at the price of every telecom duty (The CPaaS Business).
Per-message pricing (WhatsApp): Meta's model since July 1, 2025: a charge per delivered template by category and market, with service messages free up to a monthly tier per number (WhatsApp & Messaging Apps).
Port-out lock: a customer-controlled switch that refuses port-out requests until turned off from an authenticated session, with notice (Phone Numbers & Porting).
Port-out PIN: a secret set by the customer per account or number, stored as a hash and required on every port-out validation, so support sees only that validation failed (Phone Numbers & Porting).
Porting: moving a number's service from one carrier to another; simple wireline and intermodal ports complete within one business day and non-simple ports within four under 47 CFR 52.35 (Phone Numbers & Porting).
Postmaster Tools: Gmail's sender dashboard reporting spam rate and bulk-sender compliance, with an API a platform can poll for every customer domain (Inbox Rules).
Pre-send gating: blocking bulk sending from domains that lack aligned DMARC and one-click unsubscribe, preventing rejections instead of reacting to them, with checks that rerun as DNS changes (Inbox Rules).
Prepaid balance: a CPaaS account's funds kept as a sum of ledger entries with the recharge that funded them, never as a cached number, so a double charge can be proved or disproved (The CPaaS Business).
Quality rating (WhatsApp): Meta's rating of a number or template from recipients' reactions, which gates messaging limit increases and can pause templates (WhatsApp & Messaging Apps).
Quarantined number: a number tied to abuse, a carrier complaint or a law enforcement request, held out of inventory until a person clears it with a reason (Phone Numbers & Porting).
Rate center: the geographic unit that decides whether a call is local; carriers get numbers in blocks per rate center, and utilization is measured by it (Phone Numbers & Porting).
RCS (Rich Communication Services): business messaging with branding, rich cards, suggested replies and read receipts in the phone's default messaging app, falling back to SMS where unavailable (Business Texting Registration).
Rejection (email): a 5yz SMTP reply that refuses the message, such as Outlook.com's 5.7.515 for failed authentication (Inbox Rules).
Representative volume: SES's per-account measurement base for bounce and complaint rates, used instead of a fixed window so a small sender's bad day doesn't trip a pause and a large sender's bad hour does (Inbox Rules).
RespOrg (responsible organization): the entity a toll-free subscriber chooses to manage its records in the toll-free registry (47 CFR 52.101) (Phone Numbers & Porting).
RMD (Robocall Mitigation Database): the FCC's public list of voice providers, each with a STIR/SHAKEN certification and a robocall mitigation plan; listing is the license to send traffic onto the US network (Voice Platforms).
Robocall mitigation plan: the filing in the RMD describing how a provider knows its customers and avoids carrying illegal robocalls, updated within ten business days of a change and recertified yearly (Voice Platforms).
Segment: the billing and throughput unit of SMS: a long message or one containing a non-GSM character is several segments, counted at accept time and billed per segment (Sending a Text).
SES sandbox: the per-Region starting state of an Amazon SES account, sending only to verified addresses or the mailbox simulator at a low cap until production access is granted (Email Sending Platforms).
SES tenants: an SES feature that divides one AWS account's sending into tenants with automated reputation policies (Standard, Strict or None) that pause sending on findings (Email Sending Platforms).
Short code: a five- or six-digit number leased from the Common Short Code Administration, with the highest throughput and recognition and the longest certification (Business Texting Registration).
SIP trunking: voice service in which a customer's phone system or application sends and receives calls over SIP to the provider, with media (RTP) flowing separately, billed per minute, channel or trunk and number (Voice Platforms).
SMS pumping (artificially inflated traffic, AIT): bots abusing any form that texts a typed phone number, triggering passcodes to blocks of numbers on a carrier that shares the termination revenue (Telecom Fraud).
SNDS: Microsoft's sender data program for IP reputation, which includes the Junk Email Reporting Program (Inbox Rules).
Soft bounce: a temporary delivery problem (mailbox full, server busy, a 4yz deferral), retried with backoff and suppressed only after repeated failures (Email Sending Platforms).
Software aggregator: a CPaaS that is a routing and orchestration layer over owned-network providers and aggregators, fastest to build with the thinnest margin and the most upstream risk (The CPaaS Business).
Sole Proprietor brand: a 10DLC brand type for individuals with no tax ID, limited to one campaign and the lowest throughput (Business Texting Registration).
Solution Partner (WhatsApp): a Meta partner that onboards businesses with its own credit line and invoices them for Meta's fees, carrying their credit risk; often called a BSP (WhatsApp & Messaging Apps).
SPC token: the token from the STI Policy Administrator (iConectiv) that proves a provider is authorized to get STIR/SHAKEN certificates (Voice Platforms).
Special-services blocks: default blocks on premium-rate and shared-cost destinations, part of the platform's defense against toll fraud (Telecom Fraud).
Spend and concurrency limits: caps on simultaneous international calls and hourly international spend per account, with alerts, modeled as quotas (Telecom Fraud).
START keyword: the inbound keyword (or the campaign's opt-in keyword) that lifts the platform's opt-out for that recipient and sender (Sending a Text).
STIR/SHAKEN: caller ID authentication: STIR (the IETF's Secure Telephone Identity Revisited) defines the cryptography and SHAKEN (ATIS-1000074) how US carriers use it to sign and verify calls (Voice Platforms).
STOP keyword: the inbound keyword that records an opt-out for that recipient against that sender, sends the campaign's confirmation and rejects later sends with a permanent error (Sending a Text).
Stream- and tenant-level thresholds: pausing only the stream or tenant that caused a reputation problem, keeping transactional mail flowing at the cost of more state (Inbox Rules).
Suppression: a recorded refusal to send to an address (after a hard bounce, complaint or unsubscribe), scoped to platform, account, tenant or stream and honored whatever the API call says (Email Sending Platforms).
Tech Provider (WhatsApp): a Meta partner that onboards businesses without a credit line, so Meta bills each business directly and the partner bills only its own fee (WhatsApp & Messaging Apps).
Template recategorization: Meta changing an approved template's category after review; since April 9, 2025 a utility template it judges promotional is approved as marketing, with notice and 60 days to appeal (WhatsApp & Messaging Apps).
Termination (voice): outbound calls the customer's system sends to the provider as SIP INVITEs, which the provider routes to the destination network (Voice Platforms).
Throughput scopes: the separate limits a text must clear (campaign on AT&T, brand on T-Mobile, MMS per carrier, toll-free number, upstream route, account), each in its own unit (Sending a Text).
Toll fraud: running up calls on a customer's account to expensive destinations, usually through an open SIP trunk or a stolen key; an open trunk is an open wallet (Telecom Fraud).
Toll-free verification: the review a toll-free number must pass before it can text at volume, which now requires a business registration number and privacy policy and terms URLs (Business Texting Registration).
Trust score (vetting score): the score a brand earns from vetting, from which carriers derive its throughput caps (Business Texting Registration).
UCS-2: the SMS encoding used when any character falls outside the GSM alphabet, including one emoji, cutting a segment to 70 characters (67 when concatenated) (Sending a Text).
Universal Service Fund (USF): the federal fund for rural, low-income, schools and libraries, and rural health care programs, paid for by provider contributions on interstate and international end-user revenue (911, CPNI & Telecom Duties).
Verified caller ID: the record of a customer proving control of an outside number, by a verification call or text, before it may present that number as caller ID (Voice Platforms).
VMC (Verified Mark Certificate): the BIMI certificate type that requires a registered trademark and earns Gmail's verified checkmark (Inbox Rules).
VoIP direct access: numbering resources obtained by an interconnected VoIP provider directly from NANPA and the Pooling Administrator, subject to certifications (Phone Numbers & Porting).
Warmup: gradually raising a new IP's volume so mailbox providers learn to trust it, with overflow to a reputable pool rather than delaying the customer's mail; state, not configuration (Email Sending Platforms).
WhatsApp Business Account (WABA): the account under a business portfolio that holds a business's templates and phone numbers (WhatsApp & Messaging Apps).

10DLC (A2P ten-digit long code): registration for application-to-person texting from ordinary local numbers, in which every sender registers a brand and a campaign before carriers accept its traffic (Business Texting Registration).
8-bit data encoding: the SMS encoding for binary payloads, 140 octets in a single segment and 134 per concatenated segment, rare in application-to-person traffic (Sending a Text).
911 for VoIP: the duty of interconnected VoIP to carry emergency calls with a location dispatchers can use, which a platform meets by validating an emergency address when it is set, not when the call is made (911, CPNI & Telecom Duties).
Account-level thresholds: pausing a whole customer account when its bounce or complaint rate crosses a limit; simple, but a broadcast problem then stops password resets (Inbox Rules).
Aging (phone numbers): the rest a released number takes before returning to inventory, so calls, texts and reputation meant for the last holder fade first; the period is a published rule per number type (Phone Numbers & Porting).
Alphanumeric sender ID: a brand name of up to 11 letters, digits and spaces shown as the sender of a one-way text, registered in advance in many countries and not supported in the US (WhatsApp & Messaging Apps).
Apple Messages for Business: Apple's business chat in the Messages app, reached only through an Apple-approved Messaging Service Provider, in which the business may only reply to a conversation the customer started (WhatsApp & Messaging Apps).
Attestation (A, B, C): the STIR/SHAKEN level an originating provider signs onto a call: A (full) when it knows the customer and the customer's right to the number, B (partial) when it knows only the customer, C (gateway) when it can't authenticate the source (Voice Platforms).
Authentication+: The Campaign Registry's check that the person registering a brand actually controls it, billed per attempt including failed ones (Business Texting Registration).
Authentication-international rate: Meta's higher price for authentication messages sent by a business based in another country to users in listed markets, once it passes 750,000 qualifying messages in 30 days (WhatsApp & Messaging Apps).
BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message Identification): the standard that shows a sender's logo next to authenticated mail, requiring DMARC at enforcement, a VMC or CMC certificate and an SVG Tiny PS logo (Inbox Rules).
Blocklist (email): a list of IPs and domains that many receivers consult, such as Spamhaus's SBL, XBL, CSS, PBL, ZEN and DBL; a listing of a shared IP blocks every customer on it (Inbox Rules).
Blocks (email): a third delivery outcome, distinct from hard and soft bounces, caused by the sender's own authentication or reputation; a block never creates a suppression of the recipient's address (Email Sending Platforms).
Brand (10DLC): the registration record of who is sending, tied to a tax identity, legal name, address, website and entity type, under which campaigns and numbers sit (Business Texting Registration).
Branded calling: a verified name, logo and call reason added to the called party's display; for the provider it is a vetting workflow plus signing with extra claims, shown only on networks that have joined (Voice Platforms).
Bring your own number (hosted messaging): text-enabling a number whose voice service stays with its existing carrier, which needs the number owner's recorded authorization and no port (Phone Numbers & Porting).
Business portfolio (Meta): the business itself in Meta's hierarchy, above its WhatsApp Business Accounts and numbers, where business verification and the messaging limit are set (WhatsApp & Messaging Apps).
Call labeling: the "Spam Likely" style labels a terminating carrier and its analytics vendor attach to calls from patterns, complaints and attestation, which an originating provider can't buy its customers out of (Voice Platforms).
Campaign (10DLC): the registration record of what is sent: use case, description, sample messages, opt-in method, opt-out and help replies and content flags; each number belongs to one campaign at a time (Business Texting Registration).
The Campaign Registry (TCR): the registry through which 10DLC brands and campaigns are registered and vetted, part of the private regime run by carriers and written down in CTIA's guidelines (Business Texting Registration).
Campaign Service Provider (CSP): a platform registered with The Campaign Registry that submits its customers' brands and campaigns, its dashboard a front end for review queues it can't speed up (Business Texting Registration).
Carrier fee (pass-through): the recipient carrier's surcharge on each message, billed to the customer as a pass-through line that raises revenue and cost by the same amount and so lowers the margin percentage (The CPaaS Business).
carrier_fee_rules: the effective-dated table of carrier surcharges keyed by carrier, direction, number type, channel and registration status, so a new carrier fee shape is a row rather than code (The CPaaS Business).
carrier_limits: the throughput each carrier granted a brand or campaign at approval, stored as granted because the sender enforces those numbers, not the vetting score (Business Texting Registration).
Channel fallback: trying an app channel first and sending by SMS when it isn't delivered, which needs consent and registration for each channel and linked attempts to avoid double delivery (WhatsApp & Messaging Apps).
CMC (Common Mark Certificate): a BIMI certificate type that doesn't require a registered trademark, displayed without the verified checkmark Gmail shows for VMCs (Inbox Rules).
Contribution factor (USF): projected Universal Service program costs divided by projected contributable revenue, set quarterly and applied as a percentage of a provider's interstate and international end-user revenue (911, CPNI & Telecom Duties).
Conversion monitoring: tracking codes sent against codes verified per country and prefix, and throttling a destination for a customer when conversion falls, the main detector of SMS pumping (Telecom Fraud).
Country allowlist (geo permissions): sending texts or calls only to countries the customer serves, defaulting to the home country, the cheapest and most immediate control against pumping and revenue share fraud (Telecom Fraud).
CPaaS (communications platform as a service): a provider that rents phone numbers and carries texts, calls and email for other companies through an API, billed by the unit (The CPaaS Business).
CPNI (customer proprietary network information): what a carrier knows about a customer's use of its service (call detail records, numbers called, services subscribed), released only after authentication and certified as protected every year (911, CPNI & Telecom Duties).
CPNI annual certification: the compliance certificate an officer signs each year under 47 CFR 64.2009(e), stating the provider's procedures, actions against data brokers and a summary of complaints (911, CPNI & Telecom Duties).
Customer service window: the 24 hours after a user messages or calls a WhatsApp business, reset by each new message, during which free-form messages are allowed; outside it only approved templates (WhatsApp & Messaging Apps).
Dedicated IP (email): an IP that carries one sender's traffic, so its reputation is that sender's alone: better for a large consistent sender, worse for a small or irregular one that never builds history (Email Sending Platforms).
Deferral: a 4yz SMTP reply that slows a sender down; a rising deferral rate at one mailbox provider is the earliest sign of a reputation problem on an IP or domain (Inbox Rules).
Delivery receipt (DLR): the asynchronous report from a carrier or upstream of what happened to a message, sometimes per segment, sometimes late and occasionally never; kept raw and mapped to the platform's own codes (Sending a Text).
Destination prefix blocking: blocking number ranges that show fraud patterns across all customers, kept private because a published list tells fraudsters which ranges are open (Telecom Fraud).
Direct-connect aggregator: a CPaaS with contracts and SMPP or SIP connections to many carriers, giving breadth across countries and the ability to route around a failed or expensive carrier (The CPaaS Business).
DLT (India): the operators' registration platform under TRAI's rules, in which senders register as entities with headers, content templates and consent templates that every message must reference (WhatsApp & Messaging Apps).
DMARC at enforcement: a DMARC policy of p=quarantine or p=reject (Gmail also wants pct=100), the precondition for BIMI (Inbox Rules).
ESP (email service provider): a platform that sends email for other companies and whose product is reputation, pooled and divided across shared IPs, dedicated IPs, streams and onboarding (Email Sending Platforms).
Feedback loop: a mailbox provider's program that reports recipients' spam complaints back to the sender, such as Yahoo's Complaint Feedback Loop and Microsoft's JMRP; enrollments expire and need tracking (Inbox Rules).
Feedback-ID: the Gmail header that carries customer and campaign identifiers so Postmaster Tools can attribute complaint rates to them (Inbox Rules).
Firm Order Commitment (FOC): the losing provider's confirmation of a port date after validating a Local Service Request (Phone Numbers & Porting).
Form 499-A: the yearly FCC revenue report on which telecommunications and VoIP providers base Universal Service contributions (911, CPNI & Telecom Duties).
Free entry point window: the window of up to 7 days opened by the business's first reply to a user who arrived from a click-to-WhatsApp ad, in which Meta doesn't charge for marketing, utility, authentication or service messages (WhatsApp & Messaging Apps).
Google Business Messages: Google's business chat, whose Business Profile chat features ended on July 31, 2024, the category's example of an owner withdrawing a channel (WhatsApp & Messaging Apps).
Growth numbering: applying for more numbering resources, which needs a Months-to-Exhaust Worksheet of utilization by rate center and caps inventory per rate center (Phone Numbers & Porting).
GSM-7: the default SMS encoding, 160 characters in one segment and 153 per concatenated segment, used when every character is in the GSM 7-bit alphabet (Sending a Text).
Hard bounce: a permanent delivery failure (the address doesn't exist or will never accept mail, an SMTP 5yz for the recipient), which suppresses the address for the sender and counts toward its bounce rate (Email Sending Platforms).
HELP keyword: the inbound keyword the platform answers with the campaign's registered help text (Sending a Text).
Human Agent tag: Meta's tag letting a person at the business reply on Messenger or Instagram up to 7 days after the user's message, outside the standard 24-hour window (WhatsApp & Messaging Apps).
Ineligibility for mitigation: Gmail's refusal to help bulk senders above a spam-rate threshold fix delivery problems, the top rung of its enforcement ladder (Inbox Rules).
IP pool: a group of sending IPs (shared, dedicated or managed dedicated) for a traffic class; shared pools are tiered new, trusted and quarantine so one sender's problem doesn't spread (Email Sending Platforms).
IRSF (international revenue share fraud): the voice counterpart of SMS pumping: calls pumped to premium or high-cost numbers abroad whose termination revenue is shared with the fraudster (Telecom Fraud).
ISV model (texting): a software platform registering each of its customers as its own brand under one account, attesting for their details, with a number per customer because a number belongs to one campaign (Business Texting Registration).
JMRP (Junk Email Reporting Program): Microsoft's complaint feedback loop, part of SNDS, which reports when Outlook.com users mark a sender's mail as junk (Inbox Rules).
Kakao AlimTalk: Kakao's informational business messages, sent through official dealers on Kakao-approved templates, including to users who haven't added the channel (WhatsApp & Messaging Apps).
Kari's Law: the federal rule for multi-line telephone systems (offices, hotels, campuses, and hosted or cloud PBXs) requiring direct 911 dialing and notification (911, CPNI & Telecom Duties).
Local Service Request (LSR): the gaining provider's port request to the losing provider, validated against the customer's account and either confirmed with a date or rejected with a code (Phone Numbers & Porting).
Low-Volume Standard brand: a 10DLC brand type with a tax ID, up to five campaigns and a low daily cap on T-Mobile, for senders with small volumes (Business Texting Registration).
Mailbox provider: a receiver such as Gmail, Yahoo or Outlook.com that decides what reaches the inbox and judges an ESP's IPs and its customers' domains by everyone who sends through them (Email Sending Platforms).
Message lifecycle (SMS): accepted, queued, sent, delivered, and undelivered or failed, each status carrying the message ID and a sequence number so an older status can be discarded (Sending a Text).
Message stream: a separation of transactional and broadcast mail onto their own IP pools and suppression lists, as in Postmark's Message Streams, so marketing can't spoil receipts (Email Sending Platforms).
Message template (WhatsApp): a pre-registered message with placeholders, categorized as marketing, utility or authentication and reviewed by Meta, the only kind a business may send outside a customer service window (WhatsApp & Messaging Apps).
message_templates: the table of pre-registered messages across WhatsApp, Kakao AlimTalk and India's DLT, with the category in force and an append-only history of reviews and recategorizations (WhatsApp & Messaging Apps).
Messaging limit (WhatsApp): the number of unique users a business portfolio may reach outside customer service windows in a rolling 24 hours, from 250 up to unlimited (WhatsApp & Messaging Apps).
MLTS (multi-line telephone system): a phone system serving many lines in an office, hotel or campus, including the hosted and cloud PBXs a platform runs, covered by Kari's Law (911, CPNI & Telecom Duties).
NANP number: a ten-digit number in the North American Numbering Plan: a three-digit area code (NPA), a three-digit central office code (NXX) and a four-digit line number (Phone Numbers & Porting).
Non-fixed VoIP: service the user can move (a softphone, mobile app or laptop client), for which the provider must supply automated dispatchable location where technically feasible (911, CPNI & Telecom Duties).
Number lifecycle: available, reserved, assigned, ported out or released, aging, quarantined and returned; an assigned number is a held phone_number resource and inventory nobody holds lives in its own table (Phone Numbers & Porting).
Official Business Account: a WhatsApp business number shown with a blue checkmark beside its name (WhatsApp & Messaging Apps).
Onboarding and vetting (email): constraining who may send at all (a sandbox, a review, a daily cap) because an ESP's reputation is the sum of its customers' (Email Sending Platforms).
Opt-out at the platform: suppressing a recipient after STOP at the platform as a backstop, while still forwarding the message so the customer's consent ledger stays the system of record (Sending a Text).
Origination (voice): inbound calls to the customer's numbers arriving at the provider from the public network and sent to the customer's SIP endpoint or application (Voice Platforms).
Owned network: a CPaaS model holding carrier authorization, its own numbering, switches and interconnects, for lower cost per unit and control of porting at the price of every telecom duty (The CPaaS Business).
Per-message pricing (WhatsApp): Meta's model since July 1, 2025: a charge per delivered template by category and market, with service messages free up to a monthly tier per number (WhatsApp & Messaging Apps).
Port-out lock: a customer-controlled switch that refuses port-out requests until turned off from an authenticated session, with notice (Phone Numbers & Porting).
Port-out PIN: a secret set by the customer per account or number, stored as a hash and required on every port-out validation, so support sees only that validation failed (Phone Numbers & Porting).
Porting: moving a number's service from one carrier to another; simple wireline and intermodal ports complete within one business day and non-simple ports within four under 47 CFR 52.35 (Phone Numbers & Porting).
Postmaster Tools: Gmail's sender dashboard reporting spam rate and bulk-sender compliance, with an API a platform can poll for every customer domain (Inbox Rules).
Pre-send gating: blocking bulk sending from domains that lack aligned DMARC and one-click unsubscribe, preventing rejections instead of reacting to them, with checks that rerun as DNS changes (Inbox Rules).
Prepaid balance: a CPaaS account's funds kept as a sum of ledger entries with the recharge that funded them, never as a cached number, so a double charge can be proved or disproved (The CPaaS Business).
Quality rating (WhatsApp): Meta's rating of a number or template from recipients' reactions, which gates messaging limit increases and can pause templates (WhatsApp & Messaging Apps).
Quarantined number: a number tied to abuse, a carrier complaint or a law enforcement request, held out of inventory until a person clears it with a reason (Phone Numbers & Porting).
Rate center: the geographic unit that decides whether a call is local; carriers get numbers in blocks per rate center, and utilization is measured by it (Phone Numbers & Porting).
RCS (Rich Communication Services): business messaging with branding, rich cards, suggested replies and read receipts in the phone's default messaging app, falling back to SMS where unavailable (Business Texting Registration).
Rejection (email): a 5yz SMTP reply that refuses the message, such as Outlook.com's 5.7.515 for failed authentication (Inbox Rules).
Representative volume: SES's per-account measurement base for bounce and complaint rates, used instead of a fixed window so a small sender's bad day doesn't trip a pause and a large sender's bad hour does (Inbox Rules).
RespOrg (responsible organization): the entity a toll-free subscriber chooses to manage its records in the toll-free registry (47 CFR 52.101) (Phone Numbers & Porting).
RMD (Robocall Mitigation Database): the FCC's public list of voice providers, each with a STIR/SHAKEN certification and a robocall mitigation plan; listing is the license to send traffic onto the US network (Voice Platforms).
Robocall mitigation plan: the filing in the RMD describing how a provider knows its customers and avoids carrying illegal robocalls, updated within ten business days of a change and recertified yearly (Voice Platforms).
Segment: the billing and throughput unit of SMS: a long message or one containing a non-GSM character is several segments, counted at accept time and billed per segment (Sending a Text).
SES sandbox: the per-Region starting state of an Amazon SES account, sending only to verified addresses or the mailbox simulator at a low cap until production access is granted (Email Sending Platforms).
SES tenants: an SES feature that divides one AWS account's sending into tenants with automated reputation policies (Standard, Strict or None) that pause sending on findings (Email Sending Platforms).
Short code: a five- or six-digit number leased from the Common Short Code Administration, with the highest throughput and recognition and the longest certification (Business Texting Registration).
SIP trunking: voice service in which a customer's phone system or application sends and receives calls over SIP to the provider, with media (RTP) flowing separately, billed per minute, channel or trunk and number (Voice Platforms).
SMS pumping (artificially inflated traffic, AIT): bots abusing any form that texts a typed phone number, triggering passcodes to blocks of numbers on a carrier that shares the termination revenue (Telecom Fraud).
SNDS: Microsoft's sender data program for IP reputation, which includes the Junk Email Reporting Program (Inbox Rules).
Soft bounce: a temporary delivery problem (mailbox full, server busy, a 4yz deferral), retried with backoff and suppressed only after repeated failures (Email Sending Platforms).
Software aggregator: a CPaaS that is a routing and orchestration layer over owned-network providers and aggregators, fastest to build with the thinnest margin and the most upstream risk (The CPaaS Business).
Sole Proprietor brand: a 10DLC brand type for individuals with no tax ID, limited to one campaign and the lowest throughput (Business Texting Registration).
Solution Partner (WhatsApp): a Meta partner that onboards businesses with its own credit line and invoices them for Meta's fees, carrying their credit risk; often called a BSP (WhatsApp & Messaging Apps).
SPC token: the token from the STI Policy Administrator (iConectiv) that proves a provider is authorized to get STIR/SHAKEN certificates (Voice Platforms).
Special-services blocks: default blocks on premium-rate and shared-cost destinations, part of the platform's defense against toll fraud (Telecom Fraud).
Spend and concurrency limits: caps on simultaneous international calls and hourly international spend per account, with alerts, modeled as quotas (Telecom Fraud).
START keyword: the inbound keyword (or the campaign's opt-in keyword) that lifts the platform's opt-out for that recipient and sender (Sending a Text).
STIR/SHAKEN: caller ID authentication: STIR (the IETF's Secure Telephone Identity Revisited) defines the cryptography and SHAKEN (ATIS-1000074) how US carriers use it to sign and verify calls (Voice Platforms).
STOP keyword: the inbound keyword that records an opt-out for that recipient against that sender, sends the campaign's confirmation and rejects later sends with a permanent error (Sending a Text).
Stream- and tenant-level thresholds: pausing only the stream or tenant that caused a reputation problem, keeping transactional mail flowing at the cost of more state (Inbox Rules).
Suppression: a recorded refusal to send to an address (after a hard bounce, complaint or unsubscribe), scoped to platform, account, tenant or stream and honored whatever the API call says (Email Sending Platforms).
Tech Provider (WhatsApp): a Meta partner that onboards businesses without a credit line, so Meta bills each business directly and the partner bills only its own fee (WhatsApp & Messaging Apps).
Template recategorization: Meta changing an approved template's category after review; since April 9, 2025 a utility template it judges promotional is approved as marketing, with notice and 60 days to appeal (WhatsApp & Messaging Apps).
Termination (voice): outbound calls the customer's system sends to the provider as SIP INVITEs, which the provider routes to the destination network (Voice Platforms).
Throughput scopes: the separate limits a text must clear (campaign on AT&T, brand on T-Mobile, MMS per carrier, toll-free number, upstream route, account), each in its own unit (Sending a Text).
Toll fraud: running up calls on a customer's account to expensive destinations, usually through an open SIP trunk or a stolen key; an open trunk is an open wallet (Telecom Fraud).
Toll-free verification: the review a toll-free number must pass before it can text at volume, which now requires a business registration number and privacy policy and terms URLs (Business Texting Registration).
Trust score (vetting score): the score a brand earns from vetting, from which carriers derive its throughput caps (Business Texting Registration).
UCS-2: the SMS encoding used when any character falls outside the GSM alphabet, including one emoji, cutting a segment to 70 characters (67 when concatenated) (Sending a Text).
Universal Service Fund (USF): the federal fund for rural, low-income, schools and libraries, and rural health care programs, paid for by provider contributions on interstate and international end-user revenue (911, CPNI & Telecom Duties).
Verified caller ID: the record of a customer proving control of an outside number, by a verification call or text, before it may present that number as caller ID (Voice Platforms).
VMC (Verified Mark Certificate): the BIMI certificate type that requires a registered trademark and earns Gmail's verified checkmark (Inbox Rules).
VoIP direct access: numbering resources obtained by an interconnected VoIP provider directly from NANPA and the Pooling Administrator, subject to certifications (Phone Numbers & Porting).
Warmup: gradually raising a new IP's volume so mailbox providers learn to trust it, with overflow to a reputable pool rather than delaying the customer's mail; state, not configuration (Email Sending Platforms).
WhatsApp Business Account (WABA): the account under a business portfolio that holds a business's templates and phone numbers (WhatsApp & Messaging Apps).