AT&T Increases Pass-Through Fees for A2P Messaging: What Businesses Need to Know

Written by: Aaron Alter

AT&T A2P Pass-Through Fee Increases 

Effective October 1, 2024, AT&T will increase pass-through fees for various A2P (Application-to-Person) messaging services, impacting businesses utilizing 10-digit long code (10DLC) and Toll-Free text messaging. This increase applies to messaging activities on the AT&T network and will be reflected in November invoices. 

Overview of the new charges:

1. Toll-Free will have a new SMS inbound message fee of $0.0030 and a new MMS inbound fee and outbound increase of $0.0075. 
2. 10DLC fees for both registered and unregistered SMS and MMS are also updated, with new inbound charges and increased outbound rates for registered MMS.

Managing Carrier Fee Increases as a Software Provider

While Carrier pass-through fees (and increases) are unavoidable, there are things that software providers can do to mitigate some of the cost impact. One is to ensure you’re receiving proactive and transparent communication from your API provider around any changes to Carrier fees. This is needed to properly assess your total messaging costs and determine whether or not to adjust your pricing or customer fees. 

Another critical area to review is your overall message deliverability. All dropped SMS/MMS messages still cost you money, including Carrier pass-through fees. If you or your API provider aren’t proactively managing your approved TCR and Carrier throughput limits, it’s dangerously easy to exceed them, resulting in dropped text messages. 

Stop Paying for Dropped Messages with Telgorithm 

Telgorithm’s failsafe solution, Smart Queueing, is patent-pending technology that is crucial for successful 10DLC messaging. It eliminates the need to implement “capping” on your customers approved throughput limits, sending at the exact limit and queueing any messages that would otherwise go over, which means zero dropped messages. 

With Smart Queueing, our customers sending an average of 1M messages per month save around $10K annually by preventing dropped messages. This not only enables huge cost savings on a monthly and annual basis – particularly with Carrier pass-through fees continuing to rise – it also provides their users with a better product experience by enabling them to reach more of their end users. This has led to many Telgorithm customers scaling and expanding their messaging offering. 

As you prepare for this October 1st increase on AT&T pass-through fees, contact our team of experts to learn more about how proper throughput limit management can prevent you from overpaying on dropped messages, and in turn, grow your SMS business.