3NUMLabs

Operators

Become an operator

An operator is a company that offers phone service on ATSMS: it runs the servers, holds the phone numbers and sells the plans. The network is designed for many, the way email and the phone network have many. Today there is one, and it is ours. This page is written for the second: what you would run, how you get accredited, and what we still owe you before you can do it without asking us. Looking for a phone service rather than the infrastructure? See Haiven Mobile.

What an operator runs

  • Relay Nodes

    Servers that hold sealed messages until the recipient's phone picks them up, hand out the keys a first message needs, and set up calls. Anyone may run one, no permission needed; the reference implementation runs on Cloudflare Workers and you can run it as is or replace it.

  • A Gateway Node

    The bridge to the phone network: call and text termination, number registration and porting, and the regulatory obligations of a real telephone service in your country. This is the regulated part, and where your carrier relationships live.

  • A registrar

    Your operator's own signed record of which numbers it holds for which subscribers. Every number on the network names the registrar that vouches for it.

  • A client, or someone else's

    Any client that follows the protocol can reach any other, so an operator may ship its own app or serve subscribers who use one built by somebody else.

  • Whatever makes it a business

    Plans, billing, eSIM, screening, support. None of that is protocol, and none of it is in the open repositories, by design.

  • Reference code

    The Relay Node and clients are public today. The Gateway Node and the agent runtime are built and running, and come out with the next release.

    What is public

Accreditation

Who may vouch for a number

Phone numbers are administered centrally in the real world, by numbering authorities and carriers. Any network built on top of them inherits that reality, so the protocol works with it rather than around it. Which registrars may vouch for numbers is governed by an accreditation root.

Today 3NUM Labs holds that root, in the same way that Bluesky runs the did:plc directory for AT Protocol: a pragmatic, mildly central starting point, anchored on facts the numbering system already records, with the specification written for hand-off to neutral or consortium governance later. A registrar that provably mis-binds numbers can be de-accredited.

The accreditation registry itself is designed and not yet built; the alpha names a single registrar.

The operator guideIn progress

Could a stranger stand this up today?

The document that walks the whole path, accredited registrar, gateway and relay, numbers, an app on the SDK, is being written. Until it exists: with our help, yes; alone, not yet. We publish this page anyway so the gap is visible, and so the first person who wants to try can tell us what is missing.

The first operatorLive

Haiven Mobile

Owned and operated by 3NUM Labs · United States and Canada numbers

A private phone number, an app, and AI call and text screening built on ATSMS. Calls between members are encrypted end to end; calls to anyone else bridge through Haiven's Gateway Node.

haiven.mobile

Talk to us before the guide is finished.

If you run telecom infrastructure, or you want to, write to info@3num.co with “Operator” in the subject. We would rather hear from a second operator early than polish the guide in private.

See the codeWrite to us