Momentum’s Secret to 97% SMS Delivery After 10DLC Registration Chaos (And How You Can Do It Too)
- Sabrhub
- Jul 22
- 5 min read
Updated: Sep 18
If you're a service provider dealing with the absolute nightmare that is text messaging compliance enforcement, you probably felt like February 1, 2025 was the end of the world.
Patrick Higgins at Momentum Communications felt this way, staring down the barrel of either manually processing hundreds of brand registrations or just giving up on offering text messaging entirely.
"The juice wasn’t worth the squeeze," says Higgins, Director of Product. And that was the reality providers faced when carriers started blocking all unregistered SMS traffic.
But here's what happened when Momentum found the right solution: ContextRegister.
The Problem: Manual 10DLC Compliance Was Never Going to Work
Momentum serves more than 75 operators who use or want to use its business SMS services, namely sending texts over local phone numbers, also known as 10 digit long codes (10DLC).
Plus, Momentum offers SMS services to retail clients (about 35% of its SMS business).
These aren’t massive enterprises with dedicated compliance teams. Most are rural carriers focused on their local markets. The kind that Higgins says "handle everything else" while Momentum focused on markets "that basically have an NFL team."
When 10DLC enforcement hit, Higgins faced a choice that wasn't really a choice at all:
Stop offering SMS services entirely.
Set up a cumbersome The Campaign Registry account and manually process every single brand registration and manage campaign approvals.
“We're talking 40+ fields per application,” Higgins says. “That includes EIN validation, privacy policy checks, terms of service updates. It’s a lot.”
"If there hadn't been a solution,” Patrick continued, “Momentum would have just had to have gotten a retail TCR account and then gone through and had to do all this stuff manually... No, it wouldn't have happened."
The math was brutal. Someone would have "run the numbers on the back end and said this is stupid. It's going to cost how many hours on a per deal basis. We’ll never make that cost back."
And that's before you factor in the customer education burden. Try explaining to a local bakery owner why they need to update their privacy policy and understand what a "campaign use case" means just to send appointment reminders.
They just want to bake cakes.
Defining the Problem in Numbers
Before ContextRegister, 99%+ of SMS traffic was unregistered and flowing through the mobile providers as unregistered traffic.
When the February 1, 2025 deadline arrived, carriers started blocking unregistered traffic. Overnight, more than 80% of business texts were being blocked.
Once Momentum implemented ContextRegister, delivery rates improved to 97% for registered traffic.
Want to know what’s even more impressive?
Momentum achieved a 100% campaign approval rate for submissions through ContextRegister. Not 95%. Not 98%. Every single campaign they submitted got approved.
Think about that for a second. While other communication providers were drowning in rejection codes and manual resubmissions, Momentum's customers and resellers were getting approved first time, every time. Saving thousands of dollars in lost revenue, support costs, and more.
How ContextRegister Works (And Why It's Different)
The beauty of ContextRegister isn't just that it automates the process. Plenty of solutions claim to do that. It's more in how it eliminates the friction entirely.
Self-Service That Actually Works
"Our customers, they can do it themselves," Patrick explained. "All we’ve got to do is just give them a link and just let them hit it to get approved. It’s easy."
ContextRegister automates your SMS registration with the industry’s most advanced compliance platform and avoids penalties that could cost you customers (and revenue).
That means there’s no login credentials to manage, no hand-holding through 40-field forms. Customers get a link, they register their brand, and they're done. ContextRegister takes care of everything else.
Built-In Intelligence That Prevents Rejections
ContextRegister includes automated EIN validation. This is something that became Patrick's first troubleshooting step: "Whenever I get asked a question how or why, that's the first thing that is checked now."
The platform also handles complex business structures by allowing multiple enterprises or organizations to roll up under a single brand or campaign. As with most customers, Momentum has one customer or reseller with different locations. Things like one doctor with multiple clinics get rolled up under one campaign.
Removal of Manual Steps in the Registration Process
Unlike traditional SMS providers where you submit applications into a black hole, ContextRegister gives everyone visibility into exactly where each brand stands in the registration process.
It’s no longer waiting for carriers for updates (and potential rejections). It’s automated registration and compliance with clear updates along the way.
If manual submissions have ever been a problem when it comes to SMS campaign registration, ContextRegister says goodbye to all that.
The Unexpected Benefits?
What surprised Patrick most wasn't just that the system worked. It was how quiet everything became afterward.
"It's quiet now. The learning curve is over, people feel comfortable, the documentation on our website exists. We're in about as an equilibrium state as we can be."
That's the mark of a solution that actually solves the problem rather than just managing it. When compliance becomes invisible, you know you've got it right.
The other unexpected benefit? Momentum can now focus on what they actually do best instead of becoming 10DLC experts overnight. As Patrick noted: "We've been snowed with just all kinds of other priorities. We have been focusing on SD WAN and there's just a lot of other stuff going on."
What This Means for Other CSPs
If you're a communications service provider that’s still manually processing 10DLC registrations or considering whether to offer SMS services at all, Momentum's experience should tell you everything you need to know.
The manual approach to messaging compliance does not scale. It doesn't even work for most businesses at any size.
But more importantly, your customers aren't going to wait around while you figure it out. They need business SMS services that work, and they need them now.
As Patrick put it: "I remember early on, I was getting messages saying, my business runs on this service and our numbers aren't registered yet. This is crippling my business."
The Bottom Line on 10DLC Compliance
ContextRegister transformed an overnight compliance challenge into a competitive advantage for Momentum.
The results speak for themselves:
99%+ unregistered traffic → 97%+ delivery rates
Potential 80%+ block rates → 100% campaign approval rates
Manual processing nightmare → Self-service automation
Customer support burden → "It's quiet now"
If you're serious about offering SMS services in the 10DLC world, the question isn't whether you need a solution like ContextRegister. The question is whether you can afford not to have one.