US Approval and Activation Procedure : 5 - 8 weeks
Obtaining a CSC : 1 week
Common Short Codes are managed by Neustar on behalf of all carriers. A new CSC can be ordered through Bulletin for 3/6/9/12 months. New short codes are reserved and allocated to you within 5
business days.
Carrier Approval Process : 3 weeks
Once you have obtained and paid for a CSC, the next step is to request carrier approval.
All carriers have the right to approve or reject any short code campaign for any reason. Therefore, Neustar approval does not mean that any particular carrier will approve/reject. It just means that this short code has been reserved for your use and that no one else will be able to use this short code, even if certain carriers decide to reject your campaign.
Bulletin will handle the carrier approval process for you. Each carrier follows its own procedure and has its own form that needs to be filled out. In order to simplify the process, Bulletin has created an aggregated form that combines all of the questions of all carriers. You will need to complete the form and email it to us. We will create the carrier specific forms and it submit them via email or online interface. Carriers take approximately 3 weeks to approve. If carriers have questions or reject the campaign, the process will take longer. Therefore, it is critical that the form is filled out in accordance with the guidelines of this document to ensure that your campaign approval does not get delayed.
Carrier Activation Process : 1-2 weeks
Once the carrier notifies us of their approval, they will proceed to activate the short code on their network. This process roughly takes 5 business days. Once the short code is activated it is ready for testing. However, premium billing may not be enabled, and testing could be restricted to white listed phone numbers until the carrier has a chance to certify the campaign.
Carrier Certification Process : 1-3 weeks
Carriers will want to test that the campaign is operating as per the COF that we submitted to them. They will test the entire consumer experience following the test plan guidelines that we provide them.
Certification takes 1 - 3 weeks. It is of critical importance that there be no hiccup in this phase of the approval process. Carriers are not to be used as a QA resource. If the carrier finds out that the application has issues or that the actual user experience is different from the test plan and approval form, they have the right to reject the campaign, and force you to start the approval process from the beginning, hence delaying the entire process by another 6-8 weeks.
Carrier Outpayment Process
Carriers typically pay us between 60 an 90 days after the end of the month. We will pay you within 15 days of receiving any carrier payment. Example: you can expect to be paid on traffic you generated in the month of January between mid April (75 days) and mid May (105 days).
Bulletin will provide you with 2 separate reports. The first report is generated at the end of each month and will contain the summary of messages sent per carrier according to Bulletins internal statistics.
The second report is generated as soon as we receive the carrier report and will contain the summary of outpayments by carrier based on carrier statistics.
The Bulletin report will give you some idea of what to expect. However, only the carrier statistics will be used towards calculating the actual outpayments that you are entitled to. There can be a significant difference between the two numbers because carriers have the right to deduct bad debt, uncollectible revenue, charge backs, etc. On average the difference between the two reports is mostly less than 10%. If there is a discrepancy of more than 10% and the monetary value of such discrepancy is higher than US$500, we will immediately escalate the issue to the carrier for further investigation.