Pending Messages

A pending message is one that we have not yet received confirmation from the carrier network that the message has been delivered.

When we send messages to carrier network, in order to confirm delivery, we are sent back what is known as a delivery receipt (DLR). While we await return of the DLR your message recipient will be in a "PENDING" state in the report. While they are generally returned within a few minutes, DLR's can take longer to return depending on the volume activity on the platform or in the carrier networks themselves.

In order for optimum delivery performance our platform de-prioritises report processing in favour of delivery so you may find on busy days reports may take several hours to update with correct information.

If a message still has a pending status after an hour the most common reasons are:

• Phone out of credit and cannot receive SMS.
• Phone number active but phone switched off or out of range.
• Active prepaid account but SIM is not in the phone.
• Network problems.

When a message is in pending status several carrier dependent retry strategies come into operation.

If there is no response by the end of the retry period the message will become expired and will be marked as soft bounced.

Retry Strategies

Different carriers have different retry strategies if they cannot deliver a message immediately. See table below for examples.

Australia

Carrier	Strategy
Telstra	One retry every 10 min for first hour, One retry every hour for 2 hours and then One retry every 2 hours for the remaining hours.
Vodafone	Total of 72 hours. Four retries in total at 5 min, 10 min, 2 hours and 24 hours
Optus	Total of 24 hours. Four retries in total at 5 min, 10 min, 2 hours and 24 hours

Manually Expiring Pending Messages

Due to these retry strategies it is prudent to set a pending expiry time for campaigns otherwise it is possible for messages to retry at undesirable times. Message expiry function when active has a default of 4 hours.

System Expiry of Pending Messages

After 72 hours all remaining pending messages will be system expired and set to soft bounce status.