Terminology
Here are some terms used throughout the Plivo documentation pages:
A2P (application to person)
Application to person is a form of messaging in which an application sends large volumes of messages. Use cases include bulk messaging, broadcasting, two-factor authentication messages, and alert systems.
P2P (person to person)
Person to person is a form of messaging where messages are triggered manually by an individual to one or more recipients. Messages should be conversational (two-way) and sent at a frequency of no more than one message per second per number.
Promotional SMS
Promotional SMS messages are sent with the objective of promoting a product or service. These usually include sales and marketing messages that may or may not be solicited by the recipient.
Transactional SMS
Transactional SMS messages are sent to your customers with the purpose of passing on information necessary for using your product or service. Use cases include SMS messages sent for two-factor authentication and one-time passwords, and notifications regarding products or services sent to existing customers, such as appointment reminders.
Powerpack
Powerpack automatically distributes your overall SMS traffic across a pool of source numbers. It keeps you compliant with the per-day and per-second throughput guidelines defined by the CTIA.
Long code phone numbers
Long codes are regular 10-digit phone numbers used to send and receive P2P SMS messages. They enable you to have conversations with your customers.
10DLC phone numbers
10DLC numbers are 10-digit long codes registered with major US carriers. Unlike regular long codes, they can be used to send A2P SMS traffic for things like alerts, appointment reminders, notifications, and marketing messages. Carriers may limit throughput per minute (TPM) on 10DLC numbers used for different kinds of campaigns.
Toll-free phone numbers
Toll-free phone numbers are 1-8xx phone numbers used for A2P communication. They enable you to send informational messages to your customers.
Short code phone numbers
Short codes are five- or six-digit phone numbers used to send and receive SMS messages. They enable you to communicate with your customers on a large scale via A2P communication.
Message queue
Plivo maintains a message queue for each phone number to ensure that the rate at which SMS messages are sent doesn’t exceed operator or regulatory throughput limits.
GSM
The Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM) defines character encoding standards for cellular networks. The 7-bit GSM 03.38 standard (also known as GSM-7) supports 128 different characters for English and Western European languages. The 16-bit UCS-2 standard supports a wider range of characters — 65,536 in total.
Unicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text characters across virtually all of the world’s writing systems. Unicode supports several character size encodings, including UTF-8, UTF-16, and UTF-32.
Message_UUID
Message_UUID is a universal unique identifier for a given message.
MDR
A Message Detail Record contains all the details about a specific message. You can export MDRs from the Messages > Logs page of the Plivo console.
Two-way SMS
Two-way SMS is the ability to both send and receive text messages.