Q: What is a short code?
A: The way in which businesses can send and receive mobile messages through the US mobile carriers is by using what is called a short code - a 5 or 6 digit number (code) to which an SMS or text message can be sent.

Q: What is the difference between a dedicated short code and a shared short code:
A: Dedicated: A dedicated short code is a short code leased by a company for your sole use and content provision; you are able to use an unlimited amount of keywords and control routing of both inbound and outbound messages. If you use a dedicated short code there is no chance that your data may be confused with that of another company, since no one else is permitted to use that code. This is the most secure way to communicate and entrench your brand with your customers, however it is also the most costly option and it can take between 6-12 weeks for the carriers to activate your service, depending on the type of content you’ll be sending.

A: Shared: A shared short code is a code that is shared by more than one company. This service is quicker and less expensive to activate and is largely used by small companies that want to initiative mobile campaigns quickly. As there are multiple applications and services running on this shared code, the way to allocate a company this service is through designated keywords for message reply.

Q: What was the cause of the US service disruption?
A: The outage was caused by US end carrier complaints around message content originating from Clickatell shortcodes shared by more than one US customer, which resulted in the US carriers shutting down some of Clickatell's US customer shortcodes.

Q: If I am sending messages through Clickatell, to anywhere in the world besides USA, does this service interruption affect me?
A: No, this interruption only affects messages sent to and received from the USA.

Q: Has US connectivity been restored?
A: Clickatell has restored connectivity to our US customers that make use of dedicated and shared short codes, to all US carriers, except Sprint Nextel & Boost. We are in the process of restoring access to the Sprint network for dedicated short code customers, however as their policy does not support shared short codes access to this network will not be enabled for these customers.

The reactivation process is taking longer for our shared short code customers, because we are required to audit customer account adherence to our terms and conditions and accepted industry guidelines. We’re also classifying accounts into message service types for reactivation, which is designed to ensure that future service interruptions are minimized for all our customers; this process is time consuming, but in the best interest of guaranteeing an ongoing service to you.

If we have not yet contacted you to restore your service to the other carrier networks, please be assured that will communicate with you in the next few days on the process you will need to follow and information that you will be required to disclose in order for us to fast track the reactivation of your service.

Q: Why am I being impacted by the behavior of Clickatell’s other US customers that used the shared shortcode service?
A: The nature of the shared shortcode service is such that the recent abuse of our messaging platform, by a handful of rogue customers making use of shared shortcodes, has led to these same shortcodes being shut down for delivery to US carriers. Our other US customers that were using the same shortcodes that were shut down, have thus also experienced a service disruption.

We are in the process of going through a number of steps to ensure that when we restore the shared shortcode service, that abusive customers will be screened or detected immediately and that the current US customer impact will not be repeated.

Q: When will connectivity to US carriers be restored for shared US short codes?
A: Connectivity for customers using shared US shortcodes (shortcodes used by more than one customer simultaneously) is restored on all US carrier networks with the exception of Sprint Nextel & Boost, as their policy does not support the use of shared short code usage on their network.

The reactivation process is taking longer for our shared short code customers, because we are required to audit customer account adherence to our terms and conditions and accepted industry guidelines. We’re also classifying accounts into message service types for reactivation, which is designed to ensure that future service interruptions are minimized for all our customers; this process is time consuming, but in the best interest of guaranteeing an ongoing service to you.

We’d like to remind you that service to Sprint Nextel & Boost will not be enabled due to policy decisions by the network.

If we have not yet contacted you to restore your service to the other carrier networks, please be assured that will communicate with you in the next few days on the process you will need to follow and information that you will be required to disclose in order for us to fast track the reactivation of your service.

Q: When will connectivity to Sprint Nextel & Boost be restored for dedicated US short codes?
A: We are almost complete in restoring services on the Sprint Nextel & Boost networks for all our dedicated short code customers.

Q: Clickatell's APIs are returning a code that messages to the US have been sent and my account is billed, but these messages are not delivered?
A: We are fully aware of this error caused by the US connectivity challenges and it has been fixed. These credits have been returned to the customer accounts affected.