Why do I get the 'No origination entities available to send' error?

Question

I am setting up SNS to be able to send text messages to myself from Lambda. I am trying to add a (USA) phone number to SNS Sandbox, and I am getting the following message:

An error occurred while attempting to add a phone number to the SMS sandbox. The phone number was not added.

Error code: UserError - Error message: No origination entities available to send

What exactly does this mean and how can I resolve this? I looked up the error message and found nothing similar.

Answer 1

This means that there is no number available to your account to send an SMS from. SNS calls this an origination entity.

You can find the different types of origination entities that can be used to deliver SMS to the U.S. here: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/sns/latest/dg/channels-sms-originating-identities-origination-numbers.html#sns-10dlc-product-comparison. The easiest to set up is a toll-free number, but if you're a business, you probably want a 10DLC.

This used to require zero setup in the past (SNS had a number of shared phone numbers customers could use to send from), but recently regulatory changes no longer allow sharing phone numbers in this way.