The proliferation of cell phone (CP) usage in the U.S. has forced many survey researchers to include supplementary samples of CP numbers to protect against potential undercoverage errors now encountered with standard landline (LL) sampling designs. However, even though CP usage continues to rise, the national hit rate from CP banks (hovering around 60%) is only slightly higher than the LL analog. Even with this moderate hit rate, inefficiencies in CP designs exist, especially for those that screen for cell phone only (CPO) users. Traditionally, efficient sampling designs from for the LL frame such as Mitofsky-Waskberg took advantage of auxiliary information about telephone banks. However, proprietary/privacy issues preclude application of these techniques to the CP number frame. One piece of auxiliary information that is available for CP numbers is the provider. While no published lists of working CP numbers currently exists explicitly, it is possible to take advantage of provider-specific technological resources called Text Messaging Interfaces (TMI) that include both on-line text-messaging processors and ‘in-network’ search tools to verify the working status of a CP number. While two U.S. studies have noted the use of text messaging as a method of invitation for CP subscribers, no study has explicitly investigated the use of TMI’s as screening tools. In this paper we present the findings of an experiment testing the utility of TMI’s from four major CP providers as screeners for CP status in an effort to increase working hit contact and participation rates for a CPO panel. While no text messages were sent to any CPs for this study, an automated process was developed to use provider TMI’s to confirm working status of CP numbers in the screener condition. The results of this study demonstrate the potential for improving efficiencies of CP sampling designs now and into the future.