US Cellular Announces New A2P Pass-Through Fees for Short Code and Toll-Free Messaging

Carrier pass-through fees continue to rise, with US Cellular being the latest carrier to announce new A2P SMS charges.

Following closely behind T-Mobile’s recently announced 2026 A2P fee increases, US Cellular has confirmed new per-message fees that will impact Short Code and Toll-Free SMS traffic beginning early next year.

What’s Changing

The following US Cellular A2P pass-through fees will go into effect on January 15, 2026:

• Billing: Fees will appear on February invoices for January traffic
• Applies to: Mobile-terminated (MT) SMS messages only
• MO messages: Not charged

These are carrier-imposed pass-through fees and apply uniformly across messaging providers. They are in addition to existing messaging and platform costs and will impact all Short Code and Toll-Free programs delivering messages to subscribers on the US Cellular network.

Why This Matters

While US Cellular represents a smaller share of U.S. mobile subscribers compared to Tier 1 carriers, this update reinforces a clear industry pattern:

Carrier pass-through fees are increasing across the board—and they’re not slowing down.

As we just saw with T-Mobile’s announcement, carriers are continuing to push more cost and enforcement responsibility upstream to platforms, ISVs, and messaging providers. Over time, even “small” per-message fees can materially impact monthly spend at scale.

The Bigger Picture

With multiple carriers announcing new A2P fees for 2026:

• Messaging costs are becoming less predictable
• Inefficient throughput management is getting more expensive
• Failed or throttled messages can now directly increase carrier fees paid

This is exactly why proactive throughput management and intelligent queueing are becoming essential—not optional—for high-volume A2P messaging.

We’ll continue tracking carrier fee changes as they’re announced and sharing what they mean for platforms running A2P SMS at scale.