The CTIA Messaging Principles and Best Practices (Principles and Best Practices) is a set of voluntary best practices developed by member companies. They are meant to protect consumers from unwanted messages. The growing popularity of messaging is largely due to its convenience as a communications channel for consumers. The best practices are the wireless industry’s ongoing efforts to preserve consumer trust in messaging services and stay in front of bad actors that try to exploit the wireless ecosystem for nefarious or illegal purposes.
This version of the Principles and Best Practices replaces the 2017 CTIA Messaging Principles and Best Practices. These Principles and Best Practices are meant to supplement, instead of replace, CTIA’s Common Short Code Monitoring Handbook. Messaging to 10-digit NANP telephone numbers has enabled consumers to communicate with each other in a low-volume manner.
The wireless messaging ecosystem strives to enable consumer-oriented communications while also trying to inhibit unwanted messages from reaching consumers. The Principles and Best Practices address wireless messaging services that use 10-digit telephone numbers that are assigned from the NANP as the unique identifier for the sender and/or recipient(s) of individual or group messages.
These include:
- Short Message Service (SMS);
- Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS); and
- Rich Communications Services (RCS).
As a set of voluntary best practices, The CTIA’s Principles and Best Practices are voluntary and stakeholders can choose to implement modified and additional requirements through their individual guidelines, policies, and contracts. The Principles and Best Practices will continue to evolve as consumer adoption of technology and new innovations arise.
