From John Fabrega
Founder/President/CEO
Line1 Communications d/b/a TextBox

Thursday, October 27, 2022

Dear Loyal Customers and Friends,

I want to give you the details of what is happening today with SMS/Text Message deliveries to Verizon mobile customers.

First some background.

I founded Line1 Communications in 1994 and I believe we’ve distinguished ourselves as providers of innovative telecommunications services and unparalleled customer service.

In 2013 I discovered that an impressive company called Zipwhip had announced the concept of text-enabling business telephone numbers. I literally jumped on an airplane days after I learned of this innovation and flew from Tallahassee to Seattle to meet with their small and talented team and Line1 became their first resale partner.

Fast forwarding to 2021 both Zipwhip and Line1/TextBox had developed some of the leading messaging software in the industry. Zipwhip had grown to an organization of hundreds of staff and was the leader in the industry. Line1 remained intentionally small and continued to serve a niche of small business that recognized the value of being able to communicate 1-on-1 via text with their customers and have the option to pick up the phone or send a text to instantly get support from their provider.

Telecom giant Twilio.com saw the value in Zipwhip and particularly the toll-free text routing channels they built and acquired Zipwhip for $850 million in July 2021.

At first we thought that could be a good thing in that Twilio would probably have the resources to further improve the Zipwhip platform. However, in October of 2021 Twilio announced that Zipwhip customer facing software services would be shut down. Twilio is more of a developer’s focused platform while Zipwhip is/was more of an end-users focused platform. Ultimately, the value that Twilio placed on Zipwhip appears to have been their control of the toll-free text messaging routes.

That put us at Line1 at an inflection point. To continue providing services, we either needed to adopt another carrier’s platform and risk a repeat of the Zipwhip shut down or build our own platform that would be carrier agnostic and far more under our control. We chose the latter route, allocated the financial resources, and went to work developing the hardware and software necessary to continue to support our customers. We privately call it ‘Project Zorphan’ (Zipwhip orphan). Ironically the name was coined by a former Zipwhip employee. It is publicly called TextBox 2.0.

At about the same time this pivot was taking place, significant changes were taking place in the industry as the mobile carriers lead by T-Mobile decided -rightfully- to do what they could to protect text messaging from going the way of fax and email spam and scams by putting requirements in place to fully vet and verify all business text messaging senders. This spans from large organizations that send millions of marketing and automated two factor authentication messages every day to the mom-and-pop shops that personally answer their customers’ questions, let customers know when their car repair is completed, letting their tenants know they have packages waiting, etc.

The new program called 10DLC (10 Digit Long Code) Registration calls for every business that wants to send text messages to provide detailed information about their business and their messaging traffic. (see Text.cc/10DLC for a submission form)

Per Zipwhip’s instructions in early 2021, we communicated with our customers and pushed hard to have them complete their registration. Less than ½ did so. However, we dutifully collected the information and provided it to Zipwhip for registration over many months. Only very recently we have learned that this information was never properly submitted to ‘The Campaign Registry’.

Just after 3:00pm Eastern on October 26 we were alerted by one of our new partners that Zipwhip had posted a notice on their status page indicating that as of 2pm Eastern on October 27 outbound messaging would be blocked for all numbers that are not registered.

That moment and the hours since have certainly been the darkest in the 30 years since I founded this company. Needless to say, my loyal and dedicated staff and I were floored after 10 years of building these services and the last 12 months of rebuilding them. My first reaction was, ‘we will be out of business by Friday and my staff, their families and our customers will be devastated’.

We immediately dropped everything and sought to determine: 1. What was really going on. 2. If there was any way to appeal or delay the impending block, and/or 3. What we could do to mitigate and recover from the impact.

I was able to reach leaders in various parts of the industry to better understand what was going on and learned that the block is as a result of an old messaging route with a legacy carrier that is implementing the block. So far we have been unable to identify any way to appeal or delay the block. The very small glimmer of good news is that the block should ‘only’ affect outbound messages to Verizon mobile recipients. Messages should continue to come in from Verizon and messages should continue to go out and come in for other mobile carriers.

I was also in contact with anybody I could find at Zipwhip to see if we could come up with a plan. Fortunately a few stalwarts are still around and are committed to doing what they can.

We revived the registration process begun almost 2 years ago at Text.cc/10DLC and re-submitted the information we still have with the assurance that it would be submitted for registration. We have also been in communication with the folks at The Campaign Registry to possibly help sort out submissions that might not be fully complete or accurate.

As I write this in the wee hours of Thursday morning, we are going through our active customer list and preparing to send urgent text messages warning of the impending blocking Thursday afternoon and begging customers to hurry and submit their registrations so we can work to get their traffic flowing smoothly again.

All I can say at this point is that we will do absolutely everything in our power 24/7 to restore and/or maintain the services that so many of you trust us to deliver. You will never hear us say ‘sorry for the inconvenience’.  Not receiving a service that you are paying for isn’t merely an inconvenience. It is a failure. We understand that more than you will ever know.

I hope you will work with us during this difficult time and give us the opportunity to thrill you again. If you have not already, PLEASE immediately go to https://Text.cc/10DLC and complete the information for your number as accurately and thoroughly as possible. The EIN, the official Business Name as on file with the IRS, and the Business Vertical are critical to being verified and being by Verizon and ultimately the rest of the mobile carriers to send messages to their subscribers.

Most Sincerely and Apologetically,

John