KiwiSat Scales Satellite TV Across Puerto Rico on Carrier-Direct Infrastructure

Calls to KiwiSat's sales line kept dropping. Messages to subscribers failed to deliver. The IVR system that routed inbound calls from prospective satellite TV customers across Puerto Rico suffered from inconsistent routing and latency, with calls sometimes failing to connect to the local carrier at all. Outbound SMS campaigns hit delivery failures that traced back to an aggregated carrier model where messages hop through intermediaries before reaching the end carrier. Each hop was a point of failure, and in Puerto Rico, where carrier infrastructure is more fragmented than on the mainland, those failures compounded.

KiwiSat also needed 10DLC messaging compliance for its outbound campaigns, which requires registered sender IDs and carrier-approved message templates. On Twilio, the compliance process was slow and the delivery rates on approved campaigns still underperformed. When an SMS billing reminder fails to reach a prepaid customer, that customer does not pay. When a promotional offer disappears into an aggregator void, the revenue opportunity disappears with it. For a company that acquires customers by phone and retains them by message, that combination of poor call quality and unreliable SMS delivery was a growth bottleneck.

KiwiSat is a prepaid satellite TV provider based in San Juan. Plans start at $65 a month for 150 channels, including ESPN, NFL, NBA, and MLB packages that traditional cable bundles charge a premium for. No credit check, no internet required, installation within 72 hours. The business model works because it serves a market where customers often lack reliable broadband. But acquiring those customers by phone and retaining them by message requires communications infrastructure that works just as reliably as the satellite signal. On Twilio, it did not.

From aggregated routing to carrier-direct delivery

KiwiSat migrated to Telnyx in 2022, displacing Twilio across voice and messaging. The reasons cited at the time: price, developer experience, and compliance. The migration covered three product layers that map directly to KiwiSat's operational workflow.

Voice API handles the inbound calling pipeline. When a prospective customer dials KiwiSat's local number, the call routes through Telnyx's carrier-owned network with Puerto Rican termination. Because Telnyx operates its own switches rather than routing through aggregator interconnects, calls connect without the latency and jitter that plagued KiwiSat's IVR on Twilio. Voice API also powers outbound sales calls with programmatic call control for dialing, transferring, and recording, giving KiwiSat's agents the tools to manage calls from initial contact through to installation scheduling.

SIP Trunking connects KiwiSat's cloud-based phone system to the PSTN. The trunking carries inbound sales calls and internal communications between KiwiSat's San Juan office and remote installation teams deployed across the island, all through a single Telnyx trunk with local numbers and carrier-grade termination. Rather than provisioning separate trunking for different call flows, KiwiSat routes everything through one connection.

The Messaging API handles outbound SMS: payment confirmations, billing reminders, promotional offers, and conversational two-way chatbot interactions with subscribers. Because Telnyx operates its own carrier network with direct interconnects to Puerto Rican carriers, messages route directly rather than hopping through intermediaries. 10DLC registration through Telnyx gives KiwiSat compliant sender IDs and carrier-approved message templates with delivery rates that aggregated routing could not match. Phone numbers provisioned through Telnyx provide local Puerto Rican caller ID that customers recognize and answer, improving pick-up rates on outbound sales calls.

Scaling across the island and beyond

Since migrating, KiwiSat has renewed its Telnyx contract three times with steadily increasing usage across voice, messaging, and SIP trunking. More subscribers mean more outbound messages, more voice interactions, and more trunking capacity. The entire communications stack scales together on one platform, with one support channel and one API key.

Because Telnyx holds telecom licenses and offers local numbers in over 140 countries with dedicated PSTN replacement infrastructure across the LATAM region, the same architecture that works in Puerto Rico works wherever satellite TV customers need to be reached across the Caribbean and Latin America. Companies serving multilingual, multi-carrier markets no longer need to stitch together regional providers. They plug into one carrier-owned network and the coverage is already there.