# Carrier Interconnect Guide - Canonical URL: https://www.broadnet.me/guides/carrier-interconnect-guide - Language: en - Publisher: BroadNet (https://www.broadnet.me) - Markdown version of the page above, generated from the rendered page. Operator & carrier Free checklist A field guide to carrier interconnect for messaging and voice: commercial agreements, SS7/SIGTRAN and SMPP connectivity, number and routing setup, testing, monitoring and revenue assurance. 24 checkpoints 2 min read Updated July 14, 2026 Email me the PDF For wholesale, interconnect and network-engineering teams standing up carrier connections. What's inside 1. 01Commercial & regulatory groundwork 2. 02Signalling & connectivity 3. 03Numbering & routing setup 4. 04Testing & acceptance 5. 05Monitoring, assurance & fraud control [Browse all guides](https://www.broadnet.me/guides) The short version Interconnecting with carriers is where messaging and voice stop being an API and become a telecom relationship. It spans commercial agreements, signalling connectivity (SS7/SIGTRAN and SMPP), routing and numbering setup, and the ongoing discipline of testing, monitoring and revenue assurance. This guide walks the interconnect setup in order — agree the commercials, stand up the connectivity, configure routing, test end to end, then operate with monitoring and assurance — so a new interconnect goes live cleanly and stays clean. The checklist ## Work through it, tick as you go. 01 ### Commercial & regulatory groundwork Sort the agreement and the rules before any cable or bind is provisioned. - Agree the interconnect commercial model: termination rates, settlement and volume commitments. - Define the traffic scope: A2P vs P2P messaging, voice termination, and permitted use. - Document number ranges, routing responsibilities and quality obligations in the agreement. - Confirm regulatory and licensing requirements in each jurisdiction you interconnect for. - Reference GSMA interworking guidance for messaging (IR.71 family) in the agreement. 02 ### Signalling & connectivity - Choose the connectivity: SS7/SIGTRAN (M3UA/SUA) for signalling, SMPP for A2P messaging. - Provision redundant links (dual-homed) with no single point of failure. Interconnect links carry revenue traffic — geographic and path redundancy is non-negotiable. - Agree point codes, GT (global title) translation and addressing with the partner. - For SMPP, agree bind types, concurrent binds, per-bind TPS and address ranges in writing. Opening more binds than provisioned is a common cause of throttling or account drops. - Secure the transport: SMPP over TLS or IP allow-listing, and signalling-layer controls. 03 ### Numbering & routing setup - Configure routing tables and least-cost / quality-based routing per destination. - Set up number ranges, sender-ID handling and any home-routing arrangement. - Define failover and overflow routing to alternate partners on degradation. - Align data coding and encoding handling (GSM-7, UCS-2) across the interconnect. 04 ### Testing & acceptance - Run end-to-end test traffic to live test numbers on every route before go-live. - Verify delivery receipts / call completion and correct status mapping across the boundary. - Test long and Unicode messages, and edge cases like number portability where relevant. - Load-test at provisioned capacity and confirm graceful behaviour at the ceiling. - Simulate a link failure and confirm clean failover with no traffic loss or duplication. 05 ### Monitoring, assurance & fraud control - Monitor link health, bind state, throughput, latency and error-code rates with alerting. - Reconcile traffic and settlement per route to catch leakage and billing disputes early. - Watch for interconnect fraud: SIM-box bypass, grey-route A2P leakage and IRSF on voice. Cross-reference GSMA fraud & security guidance when defining detection rules. - Keep evidence (CDRs, signalling traces) for dispute resolution with partners. - Review route quality and commercials regularly and rebalance as traffic shifts. References - [GSMA · IR.71 SMS interworking](https://www.gsma.com/solutions-and-impact/technologies/networks/) - [GSMA · fraud & security (FS series)](https://www.gsma.com/solutions-and-impact/technologies/security/) - [SMPP v3.4 specification](https://smpp.org/SMPP_v3_4_Issue1_2.pdf) Standards and regulator references cited in this guide. BroadNet is a GSMA Associate Member and MEF member operating carrier-grade messaging since 2003. Related - [Operator solutions](https://www.broadnet.me/operators) - [SMPP integration checklist](https://www.broadnet.me/guides/smpp-integration-checklist) - [Telecom fraud prevention checklist](https://www.broadnet.me/guides/telecom-fraud-prevention-checklist) - [What is SMPP?](https://www.broadnet.me/answers/what-is-smpp) - [SMS grey routes explained](https://www.broadnet.me/answers/what-is-grey-route-sms) Keep a copy ## Want this as a shareable PDF? Send it to your inbox to circulate with your team — no spam, one email. Email me the PDF Get the PDF ## Email me the Carrier Interconnect Guide. We'll send a clean, printable PDF of this checklist to your inbox so you can circulate it with your team or keep it for your RFP. A messaging engineer will follow up only if you ask — no sales spam. - Printable, one-page-per-section PDF - Everything on this page, formatted to share - Optional: a call with a BroadNet engineer Prefer not to share your email? 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