Keeping Your A2P Text Messaging Vendor-Neutral with Multithreading

Written by: Aaron Alter

What is Multithreading?

When we talk about “multithreading”, we’re referring to the action of sending A2P SMS & MMS messaging traffic with two or more API providers simultaneously.

Why Would A Business Want to Multithread?

It’s not ideal to be completely entrenched with any one vendor, especially when you’re relying on their product or service for mission-critical aspects of your business. Multithreading enables you to stay vendor-neutral when it comes to your A2P messaging. 

If one of your API providers experiences an outage or plans to sunset a feature that you get a lot of value from, by already being onboarded with another provider, you can swiftly migrate your traffic over with the click of a button to avoid disruptions. This is a great way to keep your platform or application infrastructure secure. 

For example, if you're waiting weeks to get your 10DLC Campaigns vetted and live with your current provider and it's affecting your customers' experience, you’re at risk for losing business. Multithreading gives you a tried-and-tested backup plan – if you see that providers like Telgorithm have automated registration and can offer faster Campaign approvals, you can mitigate your customers’ impact and simply migrate their traffic to the best performing provider.    

This may go without saying, but multithreading ultimately reduces a lot of the friction and uncertainty that comes with moving away from an API provider and having to select another. Running a portion of live traffic with a provider you’re interested in working with is the ultimate “stress test”, allowing you to ensure that their product and service are a good fit for your needs before you’re down to the wire.

It’s important to remember that API providers are essentially “renting” their service out to you. It’s key to find a reliable provider, so you should be free to test all of your options with multithreading. 

How To Multithread 10DLC Traffic 

The key to multithreading A2P 10DLC text messaging traffic is having ownership of your Brands and Campaigns in The Campaign Registry (TCR), which means being registered as a Campaign Service Provider (CSP). 

As a CSP, you remain as the primary user on TCR (as opposed to your API provider), allowing you to switch providers easily without incurring additional fees. Once you’ve onboarded with a provider, you are able to select them as your Connectivity Partner (CNP) on TCR for the specific Brands and Campaigns you want them to manage. 

Software marketplaces like NachoNacho make it easy to explore and shop around for SaaS providers, including messaging API providers. 

Do All Providers Support Multithreading?

We believe that multithreading should be standard practice and not gated by a provider. It’s hard to say how many providers are in full support of this concept or approach, but if they are not currently supporting you as a CSP on TCR, they are essentially preventing you from multithreading 10DLC.

If you have any questions about multithreading and how it can benefit your business, reach out to one of our 10DLC experts today!