Virtual number: definition and how it works
Published and updated
A virtual number is a phone number not tied to a SIM or a physical line, allocated from a provider's inventory and routed over the internet to whatever application or device the owner configures.
How it works
A traditional phone number belongs to a subscription: a SIM in a phone or a line into a building. A virtual number belongs to a provider's platform. The provider holds blocks of numbers from carriers, leases them out by the month, and delivers whatever arrives on them to an API, a webhook or a softphone. Nothing physical exists at the number's end.
For SMS this is how cloud providers give a sender a long code. You rent a number in a country, typically for about a dollar a month, and send from it and receive to it through the provider's API. The number can be local or toll-free, can often receive voice calls as well, and can be released and replaced at will.
Virtual numbers have properties that matter for messaging. They are A2P infrastructure, so carriers apply A2P rules and filtering to them; in the United States that means 10DLC registration for business traffic. Many services refuse to send verification codes to numbers they identify as virtual, because such numbers are cheap to obtain in bulk. Availability varies by country, and some countries require a local address or business registration to rent one.
A number on a SIM is the opposite in each respect: a subscriber line, treated as a person by filters, accepted by verification services, and tied to one physical device.
How this applies with textbee
textbee uses no virtual numbers. The sender is the SIM in your device, a real subscriber number, which is why recipients and other services treat messages from it as coming from a phone. The cost is that the number lives where the phone lives.
Related terms
- Long code: A long code is a standard full-length phone number, such as a ten-digit United States number, used as the sender of SMS.
- Sender ID: The sender ID is what the recipient sees in the from field of a text message: a phone number, a short code, or a registered brand name.
- 10DLC: 10DLC (ten-digit long code) is the United States system for sending application-to-person SMS from ordinary ten-digit phone numbers, with the sending brand and its campaign registered and verified in advance.
- SMS gateway: An SMS gateway is the piece of software or hardware that takes a message from an application and hands it to a mobile network so it arrives as a text on a phone.