Practitioners Say Bipartisanship Needed in Outreach to Carriers on 10DLC

Over the past year, texting vendors and digital strategists on both sides of the aisle have been working through the implications of the wireless carriers’ rollout of the 10DLC program. And practitioners C&E spoke with said much of that work has been happening in partisan silos.   

But as the March 1 deadline for registration with T-Mobile and AT&T looms (along with the additional fees and potential blocking that will go into effect) at least one practitioner is pushing for more of an industry-wide approach. 

Krishna Ghodiwala, co-founder and co-CEO of Text Surge, a full-service SMS firm that works with groups and campaigns on the left, said the best way forward is taking a bipartisan approach to handling carrier relations when it comes to 10DLC, which is the new regime governing Application-to-Person (A2P) messaging sent via standard 10-digit long code (10DLC) phone numbers.

“For what it’s worth, I think having really strong coalitions within the individual parties is important because people need to be on the same page about the challenges of 10DLC so that they can be aligned on the ask from the mobile carriers,” she told C&E. 

“It only helps our case as an industry if both parties have a consistent ask before approaching the mobile carriers because we will look more organized and informed in front of the decision-makers at [AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile].” 

In March of last year, Yoni Landau, CEO of Movement Labs, told C&E: “At this point, after Jan.6, I’m not sure that bipartisanship has a good sheen at this point on our side. It’s just a bad taste.”

Landau had been among a group of practitioners on the left who organized themselves on Twitter under the hashtag #Stop10DLC  and on “big tent” bi-weekly conference calls with vendors, organizers, consultants and progressive organizations. Ghodiwala said when it comes to the practical impacts of 10DLC, that tent should probably stretch a bit wider. 

“A coordinated industry response is necessary because the decision-makers at the mobile carriers are mostly product and technical people who aren’t familiar with the political industry and how it operates,” she said. “We need to educate them on our work and that the way they’d approach a major retail brand, for example, doesn’t work for our space. 

“It’s a very different type of program when we’re talking about voter registration or GOTV” she said. “It’s also very different when you’re talking about activity happening in a busy election cycle versus an off-year and even in an election cycle when you’re six months out from Election Day versus a month or a week out. We don’t do consistent levels of volume year round, but folks at the mobile carriers won’t necessarily know that until we explain it to them.”

RumbleUp’s Thomas Peters, a Republican consultant who’s been coordinating an industry response with Ghodiwala, said that bipartisanship here ensures there aren’t different rules implemented for different groups.  

“There should be rules that are transparent so vendors across the board can follow best practices,” he told C&E. “We don’t have to all get together and sign onto a common letter. We can each choose to be in our silos, but I think focusing on the remaining unanswered questions that the phone carriers need to provide more clarity on, is something that would be helpful for the phone carriers to hear from both sides — these are common concerns.”  

Among the outstanding questions are “throughput caps” and ensuring that rules get rolled out with an appreciation for the political calendar, which sees primary season kickoff March 1 with the Texas nominating contests. 

Meanwhile, another challenge the sector faces: many practitioners in the space and their clients are distributing and receiving “misinformation” about the rollout, according to Ghodiwala. 

“The biggest challenge,” she said, “is there was no single source of truth for all of the updates from all of the carriers because they all had their own updates that are independent of each other. This was my biggest complaint early on when I began working to compile accurate information on 10DLC. 

“I also made it clear to the folks handling the registration process that if they want the political space to be compliant and follow the rules, they have to be proactive in making accurate information easily accessible.”

In fact, some consultants have had a role in spreading the misinformation, which has hindered the industry’s response, Ghodiwala said. 

“They may present information in a way that’s not necessarily false, but also not necessarily clear,” she said. “That’s how one blog post gets around, one email gets around, somebody interprets it a certain way, and that’s really how we’ve seen misinformation spread on this issue.” 

She added: “When we finally started to get the right information, things seemed slightly less dire, and we also became more prepared to make the correct requests from the mobile carriers.”