10DLC for Canada and Australia: does it apply outside the US?

If your business sits in Toronto or Sydney and your customers are spread across North America or the Pacific, "do I need 10DLC?" gets confusing. The short answer is that 10DLC is a US framework. It governs business texts sent over US 10-digit long codes to US phones. It isn't a Canadian or Australian requirement. What decides whether you need it is the type of number you send from and the network your recipient is on. Where your company is incorporated doesn't change that.

This post covers three things: what 10DLC is and where it stops, what Canada and Australia use instead, and how a business based outside the US registers and texts US numbers. Where we're unsure, or where rules are still changing, we say so. Cross-border messaging changes often, and you should confirm the current rules with your carrier or counsel before a large send.

What 10DLC actually covers

A2P 10DLC (application-to-person, 10-digit long code) is the registration system US carriers built to separate legitimate business texting from spam on ordinary local numbers. A business registers a brand (who you are) and a campaign (what you send and how people opted in) through The Campaign Registry. Carriers then decide throughput and filtering based on that registration. Our complete 10DLC guide covers the mechanics.

The scope comes down to three conditions:

• The sending number is a US 10-digit long code. Toll-free numbers and short codes have their own separate vetting processes.
• The traffic is application-to-person. That means software, bulk or automated sends, as opposed to one person texting another by hand.
• The message travels over US carrier networks. Unregistered A2P traffic on those networks gets filtered.

None of these depends on the sender's nationality. A Vancouver company texting customers in Ohio from a US long code is inside the 10DLC system. A US company texting customers in Melbourne is not, because Australian carriers don't use 10DLC.

What Canada requires instead

Canada has no 10DLC equivalent with a central brand-and-campaign registry. Instead, it has the following.

CASL is the law that matters

Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) covers commercial electronic messages, and texts count. CASL has three core requirements:

1. Consent. It can be express or, in narrower cases, implied (an existing business relationship, for example). Express consent is the safe default for marketing texts.
2. Identification. Each message has to identify the sender and include contact information.
3. A working unsubscribe. The opt-out has to be easy, and you have to honour it promptly.

The CRTC enforces CASL, and the penalties are large enough to take seriously. If your process already meets the US consent standard, you're most of the way to meeting CASL. The two laws differ in their details, though, so treat them as separate checklists.

Carrier-side: short codes and long codes

Canadian carriers handle high-volume A2P traffic mainly through short codes, which have their own application and carrier review. Long codes in Canada have traditionally been treated more like person-to-person numbers. That means bulk marketing over a Canadian long code risks filtering without any registration step you could complete to avoid it. Toll-free numbers are another common route for business texting in Canada.

What this means in practice: if most of your recipients are Canadian, you have to choose a sender type (short code, toll-free or long code), and that choice matters more than any registration form.

What Australia requires instead

Australia also has no 10DLC. Its rules come from two places.

The Spam Act 2003

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) enforces the Spam Act. Its rules look familiar: get consent, identify the sender, and include a functional unsubscribe that works within a set period. ACMA has fined well-known brands for texting people who had unsubscribed, so the opt-out requirement is actively enforced.

Alphanumeric sender IDs, and a register on the way

Unlike the US, Australia lets businesses send from an alphanumeric sender ID, a name like "ACMEDENTAL" in place of a number. Scammers impersonating banks and government agencies abused this heavily. In response, Australia legislated an SMS Sender ID Register, run by ACMA, under which registered sender names are protected and unregistered use of them can be blocked. The rollout timeline has moved more than once, so check ACMA's current guidance before you rely on a branded sender name.

That branded name will not carry over if you also text US customers. US carriers don't support alphanumeric sender IDs on standard routes, so your US recipients see a number. Our post on why "FROM: ACME" works overseas and fails in the US explains why.

Side-by-side: US, Canada and Australia

The pattern across all three: consent, sender identification and a working opt-out apply everywhere. The carrier registration layer is specific to the US.

Texting US numbers from Canada or Australia

This is the case we can be most specific about, because it's what Ready is built for. If you're a Canadian or Australian business and your recipients are on US phones, you need the same things a US business needs.

1. Register a brand and campaign

The Campaign Registry accepts non-US businesses. You register using your own country's business identifiers in place of a US EIN. Have your legal business name, registration number, address and website ready, and make sure they match one another exactly, because mismatches are a common cause of rejection.

On Ready, registration is handled in-app. There's no setup fee. The charge when you submit is the first month, $25. After that the monthly cost is $25/mo for registration + $2 per number. Most approvals take 2 to 7 days. In the first step of registration, pick the country your company is registered in and enter its company number (an ABN in Australia, a Business Number in Canada). For every line item, see 10DLC cost: every fee explained.

2. Follow TCPA, wherever you're based

The TCPA protects the person receiving the text. An Australian company texting a Florida phone is texting a US consumer, and the statutory exposure of $500 to $1,500 per text applies to that send. Your CASL or Spam Act consent records won't satisfy the TCPA automatically. Keep proof of each opt-in (the wording, the time and the page) in your own store or CRM. Ready records your opt-in attestation for each campaign you send and each API send that attests consent (who sent it, to how many, and when). That gives you an audit trail of your sends, but it is not a per-contact consent record.

3. Time zones work against you

This is where cross-border senders most often get into trouble. A campaign scheduled for 10 AM in Sydney lands in the middle of the night in the US. Ready enforces quiet hours based on the recipient's area, so sends that fall outside permitted local hours are held and go out later, and they're charged only when they send. That reduces risk, but it doesn't replace scheduling sensibly in the first place. Campaigns, drip campaigns and automations wait up to 24 hours for the window; a one-to-one or API text is held only if the window opens within 6 hours, otherwise it is refused and must be resent; a one-to-one reply to someone who texted you in the last 24 hours goes out at any hour.

4. Optional: scrub before you send

If your US list came from mixed sources, our standalone TCPA & DNC Litigator Scrub costs $0.005 per contact. It checks each number against known TCPA-litigator and DNC-complainer lists and flags matches. You can also switch scrubbing on per account, which adds $0.003 per segment. It's off by default. Scrubbing lowers your risk, but it won't make you lawsuit-proof.

A worked example: a Canadian clinic texting US patients

Assume a clinic chain based in Ontario with locations near the border. About 4,000 of its patients have US phone numbers and have opted in. The clinic sends one appointment reminder per patient per month. Each reminder is plain text under 160 characters, so it's 1 segment.

• Messages: 4,000 × 1 segment = 4,000 segments
• Ready Standard: 4,000 × $0.0075 = $30
• Carrier fee: 4,000 × $0.0045, itemised separately on the bill
• Registration: $25/mo for registration and $2/mo per number

The all-in monthly cost is $62 plus the carrier fee line. That excludes the compliance surcharge, which applies only if the clinic switches on account-level scrubbing or landline validation. Replies are billed like sent texts, so if 1,000 patients reply "C" to confirm, budget for another 1,000 segments at the same rate.

If the clinic added a single emoji to that reminder, the 70-character unicode limit would turn the message into 3 segments. The cost before carrier fees would go from $30 to $90. Keep the emoji out of reminders.

On cost, Twilio and GoHighLevel/LeadConnector are lower per segment than our Standard rate. What Ready gives you for the price is self-serve registration and a full platform in the same account: CRM, pipeline, automations and a unified inbox. Our Twilio alternatives comparison covers the trade-off honestly.

What we don't cover here, and where to check

Ready is built around US 10DLC traffic. If most of your recipients are on Canadian or Australian phones, the right route is probably a short code, a toll-free number or (in Australia) a registered sender ID, set up under that country's rules. Email support@tryready.com before you plan around Ready for non-US recipients, and we'll tell you plainly whether it fits.

If you're sending from a platform on behalf of many customers, some of them outside the US, each one still needs its own US brand registration for its US traffic. 10DLC for SaaS platforms covers who registers what. The registration API is documented at docs.tryready.com.

The practical takeaway

10DLC follows the number and the network, not the company. Texting US phones from a US long code means registering, wherever you're headquartered. Texting Canadian or Australian phones means following CASL or the Spam Act and choosing a sender type local carriers accept. Consent, identification and a working opt-out apply in all three countries.

If US recipients are part of your list, you can sign up and use your first 20 free one-to-one texts to test your setup before you submit registration. The free texts end once registration is paid for.