Wholesale glossary
SMS hubbing is the wholesale model in which an operator or enterprise connects to a single hub and reaches hundreds of destination networks, instead of building bilateral agreements with each one. The hub handles routing, pricing, DLRs and compliance per destination. It is the messaging equivalent of voice transit.
Why it matters
Hubbing compresses time-to-market for A2P senders and MVNOs from months of integrations to one contract. Its risks are the hub’s risks: grey route leakage behind an aggregated facade, and DLR quality varying wildly by destination.
What practitioners watch
Evaluate hubs on per-destination delivery analytics, direct versus transit ratio per country, and grey route policy. The cheapest per-message rate from a hub with dirty routes is the most expensive decision a sender can make.
Related: SMS Wholesale · SMPP · Interconnect