Sender ID rules, registration and rewriting by destination

Sender ID is the most regulated corner of international SMS, and most "my brand name disappeared" tickets are destination policy, not a fault.

The three regimes you will meet

• Open: the destination passes alphanumeric sender IDs as sent. Fewer of these every year.
• Registration required: the destination requires sender IDs (and often content templates) to be pre-registered with the local regulator or operators. Unregistered senders are rewritten or blocked. Registration lead times range from days to weeks - plan campaigns around them.
• Forced rewrite: the destination replaces foreign sender IDs with a generic numeric or shortcode regardless. Your brand cannot be displayed there; no carrier can honestly promise otherwise.

What this means in practice

1. Tell us the destinations that matter for your branded traffic and we will tell you each one's regime and registration route - before the campaign, not after the DLRs come back ugly.
2. If your sender ID suddenly changed on a destination, the usual cause is a regulation change or a registration lapse - raise it with the sender ID, destination and date it changed.
3. Never try to dodge a registration regime by rotating sender IDs - it trips spam filtering, burns the route's reputation, and lands on every customer sharing it. Traffic doing this breaches the acceptable-use terms of the interconnect.

Reporting sender ID issues

Destination, sender ID as submitted, what was displayed instead, message IDs and dates. If registration is the answer we will send you the destination's requirements and lead time the same day.