Short answer (updated 30 September 2026): when a concentrated slice of your international traffic resolves to a handful of destination networks, per-carrier pricing beats one rate per channel, and in Devotel Orbit the control is self-serve: a per-network override binds one mobile network (its MCC/MNC pair) to one fixed rate, applies verbatim ahead of every markup rule, and is created, edited, and removed under Billing → MCCMNC Overrides (/billing/mccmnc-overrides) with a two-step review gate and a full audit trail. Back-test the candidate rate against your own recorded traffic in the what-if simulator before you commit. The monthly delta below shows why.
Why one rate per channel doesn't fit
A plan-level SMS price averages every destination into one number, and that works only as long as traffic is uniformly dispersed. Real international volume is not uniform: a sender with a European customer base often sees 60% or more of EU volume landing on one network, plus a long tail of small operators the flattened average overprices and a few expensive lanes it underprices. When that concentration holds month over month, you have a real negotiating position with the carrier and a real optimization target. But only a control keyed to the specific network can capture it. Channel-level averaging quietly forfeits both; per-route pricing is the mechanism for the operator teams whose traffic has already stopped dispersing.
The condition is measurable before you pull the lever. Worked example below: 60% of EU volume to one network at 500K messages a month.
What ships: per-network overrides under Billing
Orbit exposes per-carrier pricing as Billing → MCCMNC Overrides, a dedicated page in the billing area of the dashboard. The override list is scoped by Country and Network (MCC/MNC), the mobile country code plus mobile network code pair that uniquely identifies a destination operator (for example, 26201 for Germany: MCC 262, MNC 01), so a pricing decision lands on exactly one route rather than a channel-wide blanket. The page lists every override your organization has published, with operator, country, rate, currency, and effective window per row, plus CSV import and export for bulk edits, and it is role-gated to owner and admin. The task-level walkthrough lives in the MCCMNC overrides guide; the underlying resolution model is documented in the MCC/MNC override model page.
What makes the override the strongest pricing rule on the platform: the override rate applies verbatim. A route-specific record beats every markup rule, including your own organization markup and the platform default, so the number you set is the number the next send is billed, not markup-plus-one-more-layer.
When an override is justified
Three situations justify reaching for a route-specific rate; anything else keeps the clean default card:
- Sustained volume concentration. Month-over-month traffic where a fixed set of networks consistently absorbs the majority of volume is the stable case: that traffic earns you real negotiating room with the carrier, and the override is where the negotiated price becomes billing reality.
- Temporary delays on a route. When a lane degrades (a route reroutes or delivers late), a time-boxed rate correction is appropriate: bind the override with an effective window so the adjustment expires automatically rather than living on as permanent pricing drift.
- Qualification for a network-committed discount. A carrier agreed to a specific per-message price. Document the negotiated committed rate in the agreement and put the exact number on the override, not a markup approximation of it, so the contracted figure survives verbatim.
The guide names a fourth anti-case that bears repeating: do not set a free or near-zero rate; the form rejects rates at or below zero because a zero price would emit zero-cost sends and hide the spend miss in reconciliation.
How to set an override safely
The workflow on the overrides page runs in two steps so a fat-fingered rate never ships from the edit fields alone:
- Choose the network. Pick the country, then the network from the filtered list, or enter the MCC/MNC pair directly. The form normalizes the code to the canonical zero-padded key (MCC and MNC padded to three digits each) so the resolver's lookup always matches what you typed.
- Define the override. Set the rate per unit and currency, and optionally an effective window with start and end dates when the change should be time-boxed.
- Review before it commits. The review step shows the current → new rate diff (for edits) or the proposed new rate (for creates), requires a written reason for the change, and requires you to confirm you have reviewed the billing impact; Apply rate change stays disabled until both hold.
- Simulate first. When the destination carries real traffic, run the what-if pricing simulator first: it replays your recorded usage through a candidate rate card and returns the exact per-lane and total cost delta, so the "reviewed the billing impact" checkbox is backed by your own traffic's math rather than an eyeball estimate. CSV import upserts a sheet of
(network, rate, currency)rows through the same review-and-apply gate for bulk edits.
Deletion is equally safe: removing an override reverts the network to the markup-computed price (your organization's markup, else the platform default) from the next send on, and the write takes effect immediately; no cache-expiry wait sits between the commit and the next priced send.
Tenant-owned controls, no support ticket
Everything above is a tenant-owned knob, self-serve in the dashboard, consistent with Orbit's compliance model: guardrails the tenant controls, default-open, with no global platform gate between you and pricing your own traffic. Owner and admin roles create, edit, import, export, and delete overrides with no Devotel involvement in the loop. And because pricing is money in motion, every change carries an audit record: the review gate forces a written reason, and that reason is recorded to the audit trail alongside the old and new rate. The result is a who/why record per change that a finance or procurement review can reconstruct months later.
Worked arithmetic: 500K messages, one MCCMNC
Take the concentration condition above as numbers: 500,000 SMS per month terminating to one destination network, on the illustrative scenario where that lane absorbs roughly 60% of the sender's EU volume. The baseline (markup-computed) price on the route is $0.012 per message; a per-network override pegs it at a negotiated $0.008 per message.
| Baseline (markup rate) | Override (fixed rate) | |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly volume | 500,000 | 500,000 |
| Rate per message | $0.012 | $0.008 |
| Monthly spend | $6,000 | $4,000 |
| Monthly delta | $2,000 saved |
The per-unit delta is $0.004. On that volume, that is $2,000 per month, roughly $24,000 annualized. That scale of difference is exactly why route-level pricing earns its own billing surface rather than being folded into a channel-wide average. Field-order matters more than arithmetic: rebalance the candidate rate through the simulator against last month's recorded traffic to confirm the projected delta matches the expectation, then commit.
Frequently asked questions
How do overrides interact with volume tiers?
They shortcut account-aggregation, not stack. A volume tier discounts the channel globally: all traffic on the channel benefits as you cross a monthly threshold. An override is route-specific and per-network, applied verbatim ahead of every markup rule. Both can coexist in one organization, and no surprise double discount compounds them together: the override number you set is the price billed, not the tier price minus another cut.
Why run the simulator before applying an override?
Because the what-if pricing simulator is read-only: it replays 1–90 days of your recorded traffic (only the rates are held variable; the traffic is fixed) and returns the exact per-lane and total cost delta before the write becomes business. Running it before committing an override satisfies the review gate with data instead of intuition, which matters for any route where thousands of dollars a month ride on the decision, as the worked arithmetic shows.
How do overrides show up on invoices?
The SMS rates card under Billing labels every per-operator row with the source of its price: a fixed override when one supplies the rate, or your organization's markup or the platform default when a markup rule does. Because the display path and the charge path resolve on the same ladder, the route-specific rate you see on the card is the rate the wallet debits, and reconciliation reads a consistent per-lane label across surfaces.
Who can manage overrides?
Owner and admin roles, same as the other billing surfaces. The dashboard gates the page and the API gates the endpoints on those roles, while any authenticated member in the organization reads the override rows.
Takeaway
When traffic concentrates onto identifiable networks, per-route pricing is the pricing control that pays back the most. In Orbit it is fully operator-owned: pick the network, set the verbatim rate, review the impact in the simulator, commit with a written reason, and watch the SMS rates card mark the route as override-priced. The MCCMNC overrides guide and the MCC/MNC override model cover the task-level and model-level detail this narrative frames.