A2P 10DLC Changes: 3 Rules Making Missed Calls Costly

If you run a plumbing, HVAC, electrical or roofing shop, three separate rule changes landed within about five weeks of each other — and all three make the same thing more expensive: the call you do not answer. None of them is a reason to stop texting customers. All three are reasons to text back properly, with the registration and the opt-out handling done right.

Last updated 10 November 2026

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1. A2P 10DLC: fees rose on 1 November 2026 — and campaigns now need a privacy policy

A2P 10DLC is the carriers’ registration system for business texting from a normal 10-digit number. Since 1 February 2025, unregistered traffic has been blocked outright — not filtered, blocked. If you want the full background, read our guide to what A2P 10DLC is.

Two things changed for November 2026. First, the per-message surcharge went up: from 1 November 2026, the outbound A2P 10DLC SMS surcharge moved to $0.005 a message on six US networks, including Voxtelesys, Appalachian Wireless, Nemont, Cellular One, Thumb Cellular and United Wireless. That is a carrier pass-through fee, so it lands on your bill whatever tool you use.

Second, a rule that took effect on 30 June 2026 is now catching people out: campaign registration requires a valid, public Privacy Policy URL and a Terms and Conditions URL. Submit a campaign without both and it is rejected with a hard error. Several text-back providers now say it plainly — no website showing a privacy policy and how customers opt in, no approval.

What to do: check that your brand and campaign are registered, that your privacy policy and terms pages are live, and that your fees are the current ones — brand registration is $4.50 one-time, and the campaign fee runs roughly $1.50 to $10 a month depending on the campaign type.

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2. The FCC rewrote the opt-out rules on 30 September 2026

On 30 September 2026 the FCC adopted an order (FCC 26-67) that changes how opt-outs work for marketing texts and robocalls. The headline: when a customer opts out of your marketing messages, that opt-out now stops all of that caller’s future marketing robocalls and robotexts from you — not just the one campaign they replied to.

Two older facts still matter. The FCC’s “one-to-one consent” rule — which would have forced a separate consent naming each individual seller — never took effect: the Eleventh Circuit vacated it in January 2025 and the FCC formally removed it later that year. And the revocation rules that took effect on 11 April 2025 still apply: a customer can opt out by any reasonable method, you must honour it within 10 business days, and seven words — stop, quit, end, revoke, opt out, cancel and unsubscribe — count as reasonable opt-outs on their own.

What to do: make sure your text-back tool checks opt-out status before every send, honours all seven words (not just STOP), and records the consent. The strictest tools in the market already do this — it is worth asking yours whether it does.

3. Google now charges you for the missed call itself

Since 1 October 2026, Google counts a missed call during your business hours as a valid Local Services Ads lead if the caller stays on the line for more than 20 seconds. In other words, you can now pay the lead fee — plumbing LSA leads averaged $57 each in February 2026 — for a call you never answered, and still lose the job.

That is the change that turns a missed call from a lost opportunity into a double loss: the fee leaves your account and the customer rings the next name on Google.

What to do: a missed-call text-back is the cheapest second chance at a job you may already have paid for. The text goes out in seconds, the customer can reply, book, or ask for a quote by text — and you have a record of the lead even if you were under a sink when they called.

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What the three changes mean together

Read together, the message is simple: texting customers is still allowed, still cheap, and still the fastest way to recover a missed call — but the sloppy version is now expensive. Unregistered texts do not arrive. Texts without an opt-out path create legal risk. And a missed call on a paid lead now costs money whether you follow up or not.

The fix is not a bigger tool. It is a small one, set up correctly:

1. Register. Brand and campaign with The Campaign Registry, with live privacy policy and terms pages.
2. Text back in seconds. The automatic text should go out within 60 seconds of the missed call, from your own business number, with a booking link or a reply option.
3. Let the customer choose. The safest setup only texts callers who ask for it — they press 1, or they reply YES — and every message carries a clear way to opt out.
4. Respect quiet hours. Most platforms only send missed-call texts between 8:00 AM and 9:00 PM; check yours does the same.

The 60-second fix

A missed-call text-back does one job: when you cannot pick up, the caller gets a friendly text from your business within seconds, and their reply lands in an inbox you can answer from your phone. They can book, ask for a quote, or ask for a callback — before they dial the next company.

It costs a few dollars a month in texts on top of the tool itself, and it works on the number your customers already call. If you are running Google Local Services Ads, it is now also the only way to get value back from a lead you paid for and missed.

Try it on your own number: see a live missed-call text-back demo and pricing at ringbacktext.com — no sign-up needed to watch the demo.