Telecom & Communications

Carrier-Grade Telecom Software.
Built from Scratch.

When standard SMS carriers blocked our cannabis client, we did not find another platform. We built the entire telecom stack ourselves: direct carrier agreements, number provisioning, delivery routing, and compliance scaffolding. StickySignal runs on this stack today, sending campaigns to tens of thousands of opted-in dispensary customers without platform risk.

Direct carrier relationshipsNo TwilioNo BandwidthCannabis-grade complianceMulti-tenant

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The Problem

When the Platform Says No

If you operate in cannabis, healthcare, finance, crypto, or political advocacy, you know this scene: sign up for Twilio, submit your use case, get rejected. Or get approved, build your SMS program, then get suspended mid-campaign. Standard CPaaS platforms enforce Acceptable Use Policies they cannot override because their upstream carrier agreements prohibit your industry. Most agencies shrug and point you to the next CPaaS. The answer is not a different vendor.

Platform Rejection

Twilio, MessageBird, Vonage, and Bandwidth enforce Acceptable Use Policies that categorically prohibit cannabis, certain healthcare content, political messaging, and financial solicitations. These restrictions are written into platform terms because the underlying carrier agreements require them. This is not a policy any CPaaS can easily change.

Mid-Campaign Suspension

Many businesses secure initial approval and invest months building SMS operations, only to have the account suspended after a content review or policy update. Customer opt-in lists, automation workflows, and campaign history sit locked inside a platform you no longer control. Recovery takes months and is sometimes not possible at all.

No Real Alternative Path

Most agencies redirect you to the next CPaaS in line. Same upstream carrier policies, same outcome. The real solution is a different architectural layer: direct carrier agreements that let you define your own compliance posture and routing logic, without a platform intermediary holding the power to terminate your account at any time.

IPS built the layer these businesses need. Not a workaround or a grey-market arrangement. A properly structured carrier-grade stack with direct relationships, documented compliance procedures, and a provisioning system that has been running in production since 2024. StickySignal sends campaigns on infrastructure we own and control entirely. If a carrier policy changes, we negotiate directly. There is no platform intermediary to suspend us.

Capabilities

What We Built

The telecom stack powering StickySignal is a full-service SMS platform, not a wrapper around another API. Every component below is owned outright.

Number Provisioning & Management

Automated provisioning of dedicated long-code and toll-free numbers from carrier inventory. Numbers are assigned to tenants, tracked for reputation, and rotated on schedule. Full audit trail of assignment history, usage, and compliance status maintained in Supabase with row-level security isolating each tenant.

Carrier Routing & Failover

Messages route across multiple carrier paths with automatic failover logic. If a carrier path degrades or hits a rate limit, traffic shifts without manual intervention. Routing rules are configurable per tenant, per message type, and per recipient carrier, giving operators precise control over delivery strategy.

Message Delivery Optimization

Send-time optimization, throughput throttling, and queue management maximize deliverability while respecting carrier rate limits. Message segmentation handles long-form content cleanly so character-count errors never reach customers. Quiet-hour enforcement is automatic based on recipient timezone.

Compliance Scaffolding

Full opt-in and opt-out enforcement at the platform level. STOP, HELP, and UNSUBSCRIBE handling is automatic and timestamped before the client application ever sees the event. Double opt-in flows, TCPA-defensible audit trails, and consent records are built into the stack, not bolted on by individual clients.

Delivery Analytics Dashboard

Real-time delivery rate, bounce rate, opt-out rate, and carrier-level breakdown visible in the operator dashboard. Historical trend data for every campaign, number pool, and carrier path is queryable. All data lives in your Supabase instance, not locked inside a vendor analytics product you would lose access to if you left.

Multi-Tenant Architecture

One carrier stack serves multiple clients with complete data isolation. Each tenant has dedicated number pools, separate compliance records, isolated campaign history, and independent opt-out lists. Adding a new client is a provisioning operation measured in days, not a new engineering project.

Who We Serve

Industries We Serve with Telecom

Every vertical below has been categorically rejected by major CPaaS platforms at some point. We built infrastructure that serves them properly, with the compliance documentation to back it up.

🌿

Cannabis Dispensaries

Live: StickySignal

StickySignal is a live product running on our carrier stack today. Cannabis SMS marketing is categorically blocked by every major CPaaS because of upstream carrier policies. Our infrastructure handles state-compliant opt-in management, age-appropriate list segmentation, and campaign delivery across dispensary networks without platform risk. This is not theoretical capability. It is in production.

⚕

Healthcare

HIPAA-Aware

Appointment reminders, prescription notifications, and patient outreach require careful PHI handling and BAA compliance. Our stack can be configured for HIPAA-aware messaging pipelines with encryption at rest, audit logging, and data retention controls that satisfy BAA requirements. We scope healthcare projects individually based on specific PHI exposure and jurisdiction.

🏠

Finance & FinTech

Compliance-Grade

Financial notifications, loan alerts, and trading communications require FINRA and TCPA-defensible delivery records. Our platform maintains immutable delivery logs with timestamps, carrier confirmations, and opt-in records structured to satisfy regulatory audit requirements. We can build financial SMS workflows that are blocked outright on standard platforms.

📢

Political & Advocacy

Carrier-Approved Routing

Political messaging requires specific carrier disclosure and routing protocols under FCC regulations updated post-2023. Our stack routes campaigns through carrier-approved pathways with mandatory disclaimer enforcement, geographic targeting controls, and do-not-contact list management. Organizations with compliant opt-in programs can reach supporters reliably without the CPaaS policy lottery.

The Stack

How the Platform is Built

Every component is owned outright. No dependency on a CPaaS that can terminate your account. No hidden reseller agreements three layers deep.

CARRIER LAYER

Direct Carrier Agreements

We hold direct relationships with carriers, not reseller agreements through a CPaaS. Compliance requirements, routing terms, and acceptable use are negotiated at the carrier level. When a CPaaS blocks your industry, it is because their contract with the carrier forces them to. Our relationship does not have that intermediary layer. This is the single most consequential architectural decision in regulated SMS, and most platforms never get there.

PROVISIONING LAYER

Custom Provisioning System

Number inventory, assignment logic, tenant isolation, reputation tracking, and refresh pipelines are built in-house. New numbers can be provisioned programmatically and assigned to client accounts without manual carrier interaction. The provisioning layer handles number aging, deliverability scoring, and rotation schedules for numbers that develop reputation problems over time.

DATA LAYER

Supabase PostgreSQL Backend

All message records, delivery events, opt-in and opt-out logs, carrier webhook callbacks, and compliance records live in Supabase PostgreSQL with row-level security isolating tenant data. Real-time subscriptions drive dashboard updates without polling. Edge Functions handle webhook ingestion from carrier delivery receipt systems, normalizing different carrier callback formats into a unified event schema.

ANALYTICS LAYER

Real-Time Delivery Tracking

Delivery receipts from carriers flow back through webhook endpoints into the database in real time. The operator dashboard surfaces live delivery rates, carrier-level breakdown, bounce classification by error type, and opt-out trend analysis. All analytics data is queryable and exportable. It lives in your database, not inside a vendor analytics product you would lose access to if you left the platform.

FAQ

Common Questions

Why can't I just use Twilio for cannabis SMS?

Twilio's Acceptable Use Policy explicitly prohibits cannabis-related messaging because their underlying carrier agreements require them to enforce this restriction at the platform level. Even if Twilio wanted to serve cannabis businesses, their upstream carrier contracts would not allow it. The major carriers have written cannabis content restrictions into their own terms, and every CPaaS that routes through them inherits those restrictions. The only durable solution is to hold direct carrier agreements with carriers that have established compliant pathways for this content type. That is exactly what IPS built for StickySignal, and that infrastructure is why StickySignal can send cannabis SMS at scale without platform risk.

What is carrier-grade SMS provisioning?

Carrier-grade SMS provisioning is the complete infrastructure for acquiring, assigning, monitoring, and retiring phone numbers at a reliability level suitable for commercial use, rather than relying on a consumer-facing API to manage these operations on your behalf. A carrier-grade provisioning system pulls number inventory directly from carrier sources, assigns numbers to tenants with data isolation guarantees, tracks number reputation and deliverability history, manages opt-out lists at the number level, and rotates or retires numbers that develop delivery problems. Most businesses using Twilio are operating at the CPaaS layer: they rent numbers that a platform manages for them. That means they have no control when the platform policy changes, when a number gets flagged, or when an account gets suspended.

Do you hold carrier relationships directly?

Yes. The carrier stack underlying StickySignal operates through direct carrier relationships, not sub-account or reseller arrangements through a CPaaS. This distinction is the entire point of building a custom stack. When you operate through a CPaaS sub-account, you are bound by the CPaaS Acceptable Use Policy regardless of what the carrier would otherwise permit. Direct relationships mean the compliance posture is negotiated at the right layer, which is why we can serve verticals that CPaaS platforms cannot. We are happy to discuss the structure of these agreements in detail during an initial project conversation.

Can you build an SMS platform for my regulated industry?

It depends on the industry and the specific use case, and we will give you a straight answer in the first conversation rather than stringing you along. Cannabis is the vertical we have built for and are actively serving in production. For healthcare, finance, and political messaging, we evaluate each project individually based on the content type, jurisdiction, volume, and compliance obligations before committing. What we will not do is sell you a custom build and route your messages through a path that puts you back at platform risk. The entire point of this infrastructure is that it does not have a trap door in the form of a vendor AUP.

How long does it take to build a custom SMS or telecom system?

If you are onboarding onto the existing StickySignal multi-tenant stack as a new client, provisioning typically takes two to four weeks. Most of that time is carrier-side number provisioning and compliance documentation review, not engineering work. If you need a net-new custom telecom stack built from scratch for a distinct use case, the realistic timeline is three to five months from scoping to production. The longest lead-time item is always the carrier agreement negotiation, which cannot be compressed. Engineering the provisioning system, routing logic, compliance scaffolding, and application layer typically runs eight to twelve weeks in parallel with that process.

What does custom telecom software development cost?

Onboarding as a multi-tenant client on the existing stack is priced as a monthly platform fee plus per-message costs. Contact us for current rates based on your anticipated volume. Building a net-new custom telecom stack from scratch is a significant investment: plan for eighty thousand to two hundred thousand dollars or more depending on scope, number of carriers, compliance complexity, and whether you need a full operator dashboard or just a provisioning API. This investment makes sense when you need high volume, complete architectural control, and independence from CPaaS policies that could shut down your business. We will give you an honest assessment of whether the economics work for your situation in the first call.

Get in Touch

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Outside the Platform Rules?

Describe your industry, your use case, and the platform that turned you down. We will tell you exactly what we can build and whether the economics make sense for your situation.

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Carrier-Grade Telecom Software.Built from Scratch.