smsroute delivers SMS to UK mobile handsets for $0.019 per message, PECR and UK-GDPR compliant by workflow design. Routes cover Virgin Media O2 (29%), EE (27%), Vodafone UK (22%), and Three UK (17%); the Vodafone-Three merger in 2024-25 brought the big four down to three operator groups even as the brands continue to appear separately in sender routing. Median delivery from our Frankfurt POP is 138 ms, 99.5% success rate, $5 crypto minimum top-up, no KYC at signup.
PECR + UK-GDPR — the soft opt-in rule every SMS sender needs to understand
The Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 — PECR — is the UK's lex specialis for electronic marketing. Together with UK-GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, it governs every piece of unsolicited SMS, email, and automated call into a UK handset. The operative provisions for SMS sit in regulations 22 and 23: regulation 22 sets the consent requirement for unsolicited marketing to individuals; regulation 23 requires every marketing SMS to identify the sender and to provide a valid reply address for opt-out.
The rule that commercial senders rely on most — the soft opt-in — is found in regulation 22(3). It creates a narrow, four-pronged exemption from the prior-consent requirement: (a) you obtained the contact details in the course of the sale or negotiations for the sale of a product or service; (b) the marketing is of your own similar products or services; (c) the recipient was given a simple opportunity to refuse the use of their details both at collection and in every subsequent message; (d) the recipient has not previously objected. Miss any one of the four and you fall back to the explicit-consent default.
The ICO's Direct Marketing Code of Practice and its 2023 guidance note both interpret "similar products" restrictively. A reasonable recipient would have to see the new offer as closely related to the thing they originally purchased. A driving-school booking site sending SMS about other driving lessons passes; the same site sending SMS about a sister company's insurance products fails. Cross-group marketing between legally separate entities under shared ownership almost never passes the test. The window for soft opt-in is also finite — the ICO has indicated that a customer relationship older than two to three years without active engagement no longer supports the exemption.
UK-GDPR overlays separately. Even where PECR consent is satisfied, you must have a GDPR Art. 6 lawful basis (typically consent under Art. 6(1)(a) or legitimate interest under Art. 6(1)(f)) and you must comply with the data-subject rights regime: transparency notices, right to object, right of erasure, data-protection fee registration with the ICO, and breach notification within 72 hours under Art. 33. The ICO has been explicit since Brexit that the UK-GDPR lawful-basis analysis is separate from and additional to PECR consent — both must hold.
Transactional SMS (OTP, 2FA codes, delivery notifications, appointment reminders, service alerts) sits outside PECR regulation 22 because it is not direct marketing. The ICO's guidance is unambiguous on this: service communications to existing customers are lawful without opt-in, provided they do not contain promotional content. A single promotional line at the bottom of an otherwise-transactional SMS converts the whole message to direct marketing in enforcement analysis.
How to send SMS to the UK in 3 steps
Step 1 — Create an smsroute account
Sign up at smsroute.cc with an email. No KYC. If you are a UK-established commercial sender, register separately for the ICO's data protection fee at ico.org.uk/registration (£40-£2,900/year depending on tier).
Step 2 — Top up with crypto
Minimum $5. USDT TRC-20 preferred. Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Monero, and Solana accepted. No cards, no SEPA, no UK Faster Payments.
Step 3 — Send to +44 7 in E.164
UK English uses the GSM-7 alphabet so you get the full 160-character segment without UCS-2 conversion — budget a single segment for most transactional SMS bodies.
Mobile operators in the UK — the Vodafone/Three merger reshapes routing
The UK mobile market was a four-operator oligopoly from 2011 through 2024. The Competition and Markets Authority cleared the Vodafone UK + Three UK merger in December 2024, reducing the count of network operators to three (EE, Virgin Media O2, and the merged Vodafone-Three entity). Brand identities and sender routing for SMS A2P traffic remain separate through the 2025-2027 network integration window.
Virgin Media O2 (VMO2). ~29% share, the Liberty Global / Telefónica joint venture created in 2021 from the Virgin Media / O2 UK merger. Holds a substantial slice of the 07310-07359 mobile number ranges among others. Our interconnect sits at LINX London — 136 ms median.
EE. ~27% share, BT Group's consumer mobile brand since the 2016 acquisition. Operates the largest 4G footprint in the UK. Strong in southern England and London. Direct peering at LINX London — 132 ms median, our lowest-latency UK route.
Vodafone UK. ~22% share, merging operationally with Three UK through 2026 but still appearing separately in sender routing. Interconnect via Vodafone's carrier peering — 140 ms median.
Three UK. ~17% share, owned by CK Hutchison and merging with Vodafone UK. Historically had the cheapest data plans and the most aggressive MVNO wholesale pricing. Interconnect — 144 ms median.
Pricing vs competitors
| Provider | Price per SMS (USD) | vs. smsroute |
|---|---|---|
| smsroute | $0.0190 | best price |
| Twilio | $0.0306 | baseline |
| Infobip | $0.0285 | 33% more |
| Bandwidth | $0.0269 | 29% more |
| Plivo | $0.0251 | 24% more |
Prices as of April 2026. smsroute's $0.019 rate is 35% below Twilio's $0.044 list. UK wholesale rates are on the lower end of Western Europe because competition between the four operator groups (and the pricing pressure Three UK has historically applied) keeps A2P termination fees compressed compared to Germany and France.
Sender ID and long-code economics — UK shortcodes are expensive
The UK offers three sender-ID options. Each has distinct cost and compliance trade-offs.
Alphanumeric sender ID (one-way). Up to 11 characters, Latin alphabet, no spaces. Free to use through smsroute. No Ofcom pre-registration required but rewrites to generic long codes occur occasionally on traffic flagged by EE and Vodafone spam filters — register the ID with smsroute in advance to avoid. Replies cannot be received. Best for transactional OTP traffic and low-volume marketing where STOP handling is done via a separate URL or shortcode.
UK long code (+447xxxx...). Dedicated two-way UK mobile number. ~$2/month rental through smsroute. Full inbound SMS delivered to your webhook, automatic STOP/UNSUBSCRIBE/CANCEL keyword handling. Good for two-way conversational use cases and for marketing campaigns where the cost of a dedicated number is justified by the reply volume.
Premium shortcode (five-digit, e.g. 61234 or 88888). The route used by major UK consumer brands for large marketing campaigns, charity donations, and TV-integration SMS. Shortcodes are issued by the MNO Industry Numbering Scheme and require agreement from all four UK networks. Setup costs run £1,000-£3,000 plus £800-£1,500/month per-network rental, totaling £3,200-£6,000/month for full coverage. This is an enterprise-only route — smsroute can broker provisioning but it is not cost-effective below ~100,000 messages/month of UK volume. The PhonepayPlus code of practice (now administered by the PSA — Phone-paid Services Authority) layers additional content-type restrictions on top of PECR.
Latency + delivery reliability
| Operator | Market share | P50 latency | P95 latency | Delivery success |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| EE | 27% | 132 ms | 278 ms | 99.7% |
| Virgin Media O2 | 29% | 136 ms | 290 ms | 99.5% |
| Vodafone UK | 22% | 140 ms | 300 ms | 99.4% |
| Three UK | 17% | 144 ms | 312 ms | 99.3% |
| Blended UK | 100% | 138 ms | 295 ms | 99.5% |
The UK has our highest European delivery success rate at 99.5%. Failures concentrate in the small population of numbers that have been ported between EE and Three / Vodafone during the ongoing merger integration — routing glitches during carrier database refreshes occasionally bounce individual sends that succeed on retry.
ICO enforcement — recent million-pound fines for unconsented SMS
The ICO's enforcement track record on SMS is active and the headline fines have risen over the past five years. Selected published cases:
| Year | Organisation | Fine | What happened |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 2018 | Tax Returned Ltd | £200,000 | 14.8 million unsolicited SMS about HMRC tax refunds |
| Mar 2021 | Leads Work Ltd | £250,000 | 2.6 million mortgage-lead SMS without valid consent |
| Sept 2021 | We Buy Any Car / Saga / Sports Direct (joint sweep) | £495,000 combined | 354 million unsolicited marketing messages (SMS + email) across the group |
| Apr 2024 | Outsource Strategies Ltd | £240,000 | 1.43 million unsolicited marketing calls to TPS-registered numbers |
The pattern visible across these cases: the ICO's preferred posture is to issue a monetary penalty notice when the sender cannot produce a defensible consent trail, even where the sender had some form of opt-in logic. Evidence of the consent event — timestamp, IP, the specific form the user saw, the purpose they consented to — is what separates a £25,000 educational fine from a £300,000+ headline penalty. The ICO has also increasingly used s.55A MPN powers under the Data Protection Act 1998 legacy framework against pre-2018 breaches and Art. 83 UK-GDPR powers against post-2018 breaches, with the higher cap on the latter route.
Frequently asked questions
When does the PECR soft opt-in apply?
The PECR soft opt-in (regulation 22(3)) applies when four conditions are all met: (1) you obtained the recipient's contact details in the course of the sale or negotiations for the sale of a product or service; (2) the SMS is marketing your own similar products or services; (3) the recipient was given a simple means to refuse this use of their details at the point of collection and in every subsequent message; (4) the recipient has not previously objected. Miss any of the four and the exemption evaporates — you then need explicit opt-in consent. The ICO's 2023 direct marketing guidance and its 2019 PECR update both stress that 'similar products' is construed narrowly — a customer who bought car insurance has not consented to home insurance marketing from an affiliated brand.
What does 'similar products' mean under PECR?
The ICO interprets 'similar' restrictively. A reasonable person who bought the original product would have to expect marketing about the new product to be related. A gym-class booking site can market other gym classes; it cannot market nutrition supplements. A bookshop can market similar books; it cannot market unrelated homewares under the same brand. Cross-brand marketing within a corporate group — one subsidiary sending prospecting SMS to another subsidiary's customers — almost always fails the test. When in doubt, obtain explicit opt-in.
Do I need to register with the ICO to send SMS to UK recipients?
Most commercial SMS senders must pay the ICO data protection fee under the Data Protection (Charges and Information) Regulations 2018. The fee is tiered by organisation size: £40/year for Tier 1 (small organisations), £60/year for Tier 2, £2,900/year for Tier 3 (250+ employees or turnover over £36 million). Registration is with the ICO directly at ico.org.uk/registration. Failure to pay is itself a fineable offence (up to £4,350). If you are using smsroute as a processor under UK-GDPR Art. 28, you remain the controller and the registration obligation stays with you.
What are typical ICO fines for unconsented SMS?
Under PECR regulation 22 and the Data Protection Act 2018, the ICO can issue monetary penalty notices up to £500,000 per contravention (with deliberate or reckless breaches also potentially triggering UK-GDPR fines up to £17.5 million or 4% of global turnover). Published enforcement examples drawn from the ICO's public register include the £200,000 fine against Tax Returned Ltd (Dec 2018) for 14.8 million unsolicited tax-refund SMS, the £250,000 fine against Leads Work Ltd (Mar 2021) for 2.6 million mortgage-lead SMS, the £495,000 joint sweep (Sept 2021) against We Buy Any Car, Saga, and Sports Direct for 354 million mixed-channel marketing messages, and the £240,000 fine against Outsource Strategies Ltd (Apr 2024) for 1.43 million unsolicited calls to TPS-registered numbers. The ICO consistently looks for an audit-ready consent trail: timestamp, IP, the specific form the user saw, and the purpose consented to.
What format should UK mobile numbers be in?
E.164 format with country code +44 followed by 7 and then a ten-digit mobile subscriber number (the full domestic form is 07xxx xxxxxx, so you drop the leading 0). Examples: +447700900123, +447911123456. All UK mobile numbers begin with 07 domestically, which becomes +447 in international form. smsroute's API normalizes 07xx inputs to +447xx but strict E.164 is safest.
What sender IDs does the UK allow — alphanumeric, long code, or shortcode?
All three. Alphanumeric sender IDs up to 11 characters (Latin, no spaces) are supported for one-way A2P and require no formal Ofcom pre-registration, but EE and Vodafone UK increasingly rewrite unregistered IDs to a generic long code on traffic flagged by spam filters. UK long codes (+447xxxx...) enable two-way SMS at modest per-month rental. Premium shortcodes (five-digit, e.g. 61234) support scaled consumer marketing and STOP keyword handling but come with substantial setup and monthly fees — typically £1,000+ setup and £800-1,500/month rental across all four networks. smsroute provides alphanumeric and long-code service; shortcode provisioning is available on request for enterprise customers.
How long does an SMS take to reach a UK handset from smsroute?
Median delivery from our Frankfurt POP to a UK mobile is 138 milliseconds. The 95th percentile is 295 ms. The UK is our fastest European route — we interconnect with EE at LINX London and with Vodafone UK at their carrier peering point. Delays beyond 30 seconds indicate handset-off or out-of-coverage; operators buffer and retry for 48 hours.
Does smsroute handle STOP keyword opt-out automatically?
Yes when you use a smsroute-provisioned UK long code or shortcode: inbound STOP (case-insensitive), UNSUBSCRIBE, and CANCEL keywords automatically flag the number as opted-out on your account and subsequent sends to that number are blocked with an opt-out error returned to the API. When you use an alphanumeric sender ID, replies cannot be routed back and you are responsible for providing an alternative opt-out mechanism in the SMS body (typically a URL or a short code separate from your alphanumeric ID). PECR regulation 23 explicitly requires that every marketing SMS include a clear opt-out mechanism.
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package main
import (
"bytes"
"encoding/json"
"fmt"
"io"
"net/http"
"os"
)
func main() {
payload, _ := json.Marshal(map[string]string{
"to": "+445551234567",
"from": "smsroute",
"text": "Your verification code is 384921",
})
req, _ := http.NewRequest("POST",
"https://api.smsroute.cc/v1/sms/send",
bytes.NewBuffer(payload))
req.Header.Set("Authorization", "Bearer "+os.Getenv("SMSROUTE_API_KEY"))
req.Header.Set("Content-Type", "application/json")
resp, err := http.DefaultClient.Do(req)
if err != nil { panic(err) }
defer resp.Body.Close()
body, _ := io.ReadAll(resp.Body)
fmt.Println(string(body))
}import requests, os
r = requests.post(
"https://api.smsroute.cc/v1/messages",
headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['SMSROUTE_API_KEY']}"},
json={
"to": "+447700900123",
"from": "AcmeHQ",
"body": "Your verification code is 384921. Valid 10 min. Reply STOP to opt out."
}
)
print(r.json())curl -X POST https://api.smsroute.cc/v1/messages \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $SMSROUTE_API_KEY" \
-d '{
"to": "+447700900123",
"from": "AcmeHQ",
"body": "Your verification code is 384921. Valid 10 min. Reply STOP to opt out."
}'import fetch from "node-fetch";
const apiKey = process.env.SMSROUTE_API_KEY;
const res = await fetch("https://api.smsroute.cc/v1/sms/send", {
method: "POST",
headers: {
Authorization: `Bearer ${apiKey}`,
"Content-Type": "application/json",
},
body: JSON.stringify({
to: "+445551234567",
from: "smsroute",
text: "Your verification code is 384921",
}),
});
console.log(await res.json());<?php
$apiKey = getenv('SMSROUTE_API_KEY');
$payload = json_encode([
'to' => '+445551234567',
'from' => 'smsroute',
'text' => 'Your verification code is 384921',
], JSON_UNESCAPED_UNICODE);
$ch = curl_init('https://api.smsroute.cc/v1/sms/send');
curl_setopt_array($ch, [
CURLOPT_POST => true,
CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => [
'Authorization: Bearer ' . $apiKey,
'Content-Type: application/json',
],
CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => $payload,
]);
echo curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);Mobile operators in the UK — the Vodafone/Three merger reshapes routing
The UK mobile market was a four-operator oligopoly from 2011 through 2024. The Competition and Markets Authority cleared the Vodafone UK + Three UK merger in December 2024, reducing the count of network operators to three (EE, Virgin Media O2, and the merged Vodafone-Three entity). Brand identities and sender routing for SMS A2P traffic remain separate through the 2025-2027 network integration window.
Virgin Media O2 (VMO2). ~29% share, the Liberty Global / Telefónica joint venture created in 2021 from the Virgin Media / O2 UK merger. Holds a substantial slice of the 07310-07359 mobile number ranges among others. Our interconnect sits at LINX London — 136 ms median.
EE. ~27% share, BT Group's consumer mobile brand since the 2016 acquisition. Operates the largest 4G footprint in the UK. Strong in southern England and London. Direct peering at LINX London — 132 ms median, our lowest-latency UK route.
Vodafone UK. ~22% share, merging operationally with Three UK through 2026 but still appearing separately in sender routing. Interconnect via Vodafone's carrier peering — 140 ms median.
Three UK. ~17% share, owned by CK Hutchison and merging with Vodafone UK. Historically had the cheapest data plans and the most aggressive MVNO wholesale pricing. Interconnect — 144 ms median.
Pricing vs competitors
| Provider | Price per SMS (USD) | vs. smsroute |
|---|---|---|
| smsroute | $0.0190 | best price |
| Twilio | $0.0306 | baseline |
| Infobip | $0.0285 | 33% more |
| Bandwidth | $0.0269 | 29% more |
| Plivo | $0.0251 | 24% more |
Prices as of April 2026. smsroute's $0.019 rate is 35% below Twilio's $0.044 list. UK wholesale rates are on the lower end of Western Europe because competition between the four operator groups (and the pricing pressure Three UK has historically applied) keeps A2P termination fees compressed compared to Germany and France.
Sender ID and long-code economics — UK shortcodes are expensive
The UK offers three sender-ID options. Each has distinct cost and compliance trade-offs.
Alphanumeric sender ID (one-way). Up to 11 characters, Latin alphabet, no spaces. Free to use through smsroute. No Ofcom pre-registration required but rewrites to generic long codes occur occasionally on traffic flagged by EE and Vodafone spam filters — register the ID with smsroute in advance to avoid. Replies cannot be received. Best for transactional OTP traffic and low-volume marketing where STOP handling is done via a separate URL or shortcode.
UK long code (+447xxxx...). Dedicated two-way UK mobile number. ~$2/month rental through smsroute. Full inbound SMS delivered to your webhook, automatic STOP/UNSUBSCRIBE/CANCEL keyword handling. Good for two-way conversational use cases and for marketing campaigns where the cost of a dedicated number is justified by the reply volume.
Premium shortcode (five-digit, e.g. 61234 or 88888). The route used by major UK consumer brands for large marketing campaigns, charity donations, and TV-integration SMS. Shortcodes are issued by the MNO Industry Numbering Scheme and require agreement from all four UK networks. Setup costs run £1,000-£3,000 plus £800-£1,500/month per-network rental, totaling £3,200-£6,000/month for full coverage. This is an enterprise-only route — smsroute can broker provisioning but it is not cost-effective below ~100,000 messages/month of UK volume. The PhonepayPlus code of practice (now administered by the PSA — Phone-paid Services Authority) layers additional content-type restrictions on top of PECR.
Latency + delivery reliability
| Operator | Market share | P50 latency | P95 latency | Delivery success |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| EE | 27% | 132 ms | 278 ms | 99.7% |
| Virgin Media O2 | 29% | 136 ms | 290 ms | 99.5% |
| Vodafone UK | 22% | 140 ms | 300 ms | 99.4% |
| Three UK | 17% | 144 ms | 312 ms | 99.3% |
| Blended UK | 100% | 138 ms | 295 ms | 99.5% |
The UK has our highest European delivery success rate at 99.5%. Failures concentrate in the small population of numbers that have been ported between EE and Three / Vodafone during the ongoing merger integration — routing glitches during carrier database refreshes occasionally bounce individual sends that succeed on retry.
ICO enforcement — recent million-pound fines for unconsented SMS
The ICO's enforcement track record on SMS is active and the headline fines have risen over the past five years. Selected published cases:
| Year | Organisation | Fine | What happened |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 2018 | Tax Returned Ltd | £200,000 | 14.8 million unsolicited SMS about HMRC tax refunds |
| Mar 2021 | Leads Work Ltd | £250,000 | 2.6 million mortgage-lead SMS without valid consent |
| Sept 2021 | We Buy Any Car / Saga / Sports Direct (joint sweep) | £495,000 combined | 354 million unsolicited marketing messages (SMS + email) across the group |
| Apr 2024 | Outsource Strategies Ltd | £240,000 | 1.43 million unsolicited marketing calls to TPS-registered numbers |
The pattern visible across these cases: the ICO's preferred posture is to issue a monetary penalty notice when the sender cannot produce a defensible consent trail, even where the sender had some form of opt-in logic. Evidence of the consent event — timestamp, IP, the specific form the user saw, the purpose they consented to — is what separates a £25,000 educational fine from a £300,000+ headline penalty. The ICO has also increasingly used s.55A MPN powers under the Data Protection Act 1998 legacy framework against pre-2018 breaches and Art. 83 UK-GDPR powers against post-2018 breaches, with the higher cap on the latter route.
Frequently asked questions
When does the PECR soft opt-in apply?
The PECR soft opt-in (regulation 22(3)) applies when four conditions are all met: (1) you obtained the recipient's contact details in the course of the sale or negotiations for the sale of a product or service; (2) the SMS is marketing your own similar products or services; (3) the recipient was given a simple means to refuse this use of their details at the point of collection and in every subsequent message; (4) the recipient has not previously objected. Miss any of the four and the exemption evaporates — you then need explicit opt-in consent. The ICO's 2023 direct marketing guidance and its 2019 PECR update both stress that 'similar products' is construed narrowly — a customer who bought car insurance has not consented to home insurance marketing from an affiliated brand.
What does 'similar products' mean under PECR?
The ICO interprets 'similar' restrictively. A reasonable person who bought the original product would have to expect marketing about the new product to be related. A gym-class booking site can market other gym classes; it cannot market nutrition supplements. A bookshop can market similar books; it cannot market unrelated homewares under the same brand. Cross-brand marketing within a corporate group — one subsidiary sending prospecting SMS to another subsidiary's customers — almost always fails the test. When in doubt, obtain explicit opt-in.
Do I need to register with the ICO to send SMS to UK recipients?
Most commercial SMS senders must pay the ICO data protection fee under the Data Protection (Charges and Information) Regulations 2018. The fee is tiered by organisation size: £40/year for Tier 1 (small organisations), £60/year for Tier 2, £2,900/year for Tier 3 (250+ employees or turnover over £36 million). Registration is with the ICO directly at ico.org.uk/registration. Failure to pay is itself a fineable offence (up to £4,350). If you are using smsroute as a processor under UK-GDPR Art. 28, you remain the controller and the registration obligation stays with you.
What are typical ICO fines for unconsented SMS?
Under PECR regulation 22 and the Data Protection Act 2018, the ICO can issue monetary penalty notices up to £500,000 per contravention (with deliberate or reckless breaches also potentially triggering UK-GDPR fines up to £17.5 million or 4% of global turnover). Published enforcement examples drawn from the ICO's public register include the £200,000 fine against Tax Returned Ltd (Dec 2018) for 14.8 million unsolicited tax-refund SMS, the £250,000 fine against Leads Work Ltd (Mar 2021) for 2.6 million mortgage-lead SMS, the £495,000 joint sweep (Sept 2021) against We Buy Any Car, Saga, and Sports Direct for 354 million mixed-channel marketing messages, and the £240,000 fine against Outsource Strategies Ltd (Apr 2024) for 1.43 million unsolicited calls to TPS-registered numbers. The ICO consistently looks for an audit-ready consent trail: timestamp, IP, the specific form the user saw, and the purpose consented to.
What format should UK mobile numbers be in?
E.164 format with country code +44 followed by 7 and then a ten-digit mobile subscriber number (the full domestic form is 07xxx xxxxxx, so you drop the leading 0). Examples: +447700900123, +447911123456. All UK mobile numbers begin with 07 domestically, which becomes +447 in international form. smsroute's API normalizes 07xx inputs to +447xx but strict E.164 is safest.
What sender IDs does the UK allow — alphanumeric, long code, or shortcode?
All three. Alphanumeric sender IDs up to 11 characters (Latin, no spaces) are supported for one-way A2P and require no formal Ofcom pre-registration, but EE and Vodafone UK increasingly rewrite unregistered IDs to a generic long code on traffic flagged by spam filters. UK long codes (+447xxxx...) enable two-way SMS at modest per-month rental. Premium shortcodes (five-digit, e.g. 61234) support scaled consumer marketing and STOP keyword handling but come with substantial setup and monthly fees — typically £1,000+ setup and £800-1,500/month rental across all four networks. smsroute provides alphanumeric and long-code service; shortcode provisioning is available on request for enterprise customers.
How long does an SMS take to reach a UK handset from smsroute?
Median delivery from our Frankfurt POP to a UK mobile is 138 milliseconds. The 95th percentile is 295 ms. The UK is our fastest European route — we interconnect with EE at LINX London and with Vodafone UK at their carrier peering point. Delays beyond 30 seconds indicate handset-off or out-of-coverage; operators buffer and retry for 48 hours.
Does smsroute handle STOP keyword opt-out automatically?
Yes when you use a smsroute-provisioned UK long code or shortcode: inbound STOP (case-insensitive), UNSUBSCRIBE, and CANCEL keywords automatically flag the number as opted-out on your account and subsequent sends to that number are blocked with an opt-out error returned to the API. When you use an alphanumeric sender ID, replies cannot be routed back and you are responsible for providing an alternative opt-out mechanism in the SMS body (typically a URL or a short code separate from your alphanumeric ID). PECR regulation 23 explicitly requires that every marketing SMS include a clear opt-out mechanism.
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