[tanvach]

Having explored Twillio for text messaging recently, turns out it’s getting very hard to be able to send them programmatically in the US due to lengthy A2P registration process. I understand in spirit this aims to reduce text spam, but my feeling is this becoming another money making opportunity for carriers.

https://www.twilio.com/docs/flex/admin-guide/setup/conversat...

[kaishiro]

Having very recently gone through this process for both a “local” number A2P registration as well as a toll-free registration process I can say, unequivocally, that’s already what it is.

There is no step in the process that would deter any company from taking the ~30 minutes of effort to get the registration details in order. We run a legitimate company that was only seeking to send transactional notifications that our customers specifically requested, and it took 4 rounds of back and forth to get approved. However, each step provided a very clear error code with very specific remedies (e.g. Opt-in form must include language which states…), which would make it a rote process for automation or even manual repetition. In fact, the only thing that I could see which would deter a company which seeks to rely on spam for profit would be if the registration fees were larger than their expected profit (they’re not, thankfully).

I don’t even mean this comment to necessarily be an indictment of the process - it was…fine? I’m just not entirely sure what it’s purpose could be except to collect additional fees for each SMS campaign.

[crabl]

Sole prop registrations (for individuals/non-corporations) are not _too_ onerous anymore and generally have a faster time to approval, provided you submit the right docs. Totally agree it's a money grab though. Twilio et al. have so much power to keep bad actors at bay but keep pushing responsibility to the consumers of their API. I feel like setting up push notifications is easier though, which is saying something.