General adherence practice -
The following are some general best practices:
Get opt-in consent from each end user before sending any communication to them, particular for marketing or other non-essential communications.
Only communicate during an end user's daytime hours unless it is urgent.
SMS campaigns should support HELP/STOP messages, and similar messages, in the end user's local language.
Do not contact end users on do-not-call or do-not-disturb registries.
1> AUSTRALIA -
Compliance considerations
Carrier partners strongly encourage customers to review proposed use cases with qualified legal counsel to ensure they comply with all applicable laws. Sending gambling related content is strictly prohibited in Australia.
Unsolicited Communication: All commercial electronic messages sent to an electronic address in Australia are beholden to the SPAM Act (2003). It is a partner’s responsibility to familiarize yourself with this legislation and ensure your compliance; the key rules relating to this can be found at https://www.acma.gov.au/theACMA/spam-industry-obligations and below: - Permission (consent)—messages can only be sent with the permission of the person who owns the account for the address (usually the recipient). - Identification—messages must contain the name and contact details of the person or business that authorized the message (sender identification). - Unsubscribe—messages must contain a low (or no cost) way for the recipient to stop getting messages (to ‘opt out’ or unsubscribe).
2> United States -
Compliance considerations
U.S. telecommunications providers may assess fees for non-compliant A2P traffic, and Carrier partners will pass these fees onto you. To date, T-Mobile is the first U.S. telecommunications provider to announce non-compliance fees for violations of T-Mobile’s Code of Conduct. Carrier partners will update these guidelines accordingly if/when additional U.S. telecommunications providers announce non-compliance fees.
T-Mobile non-compliance fees are as follows:
10DLC Long Code Messaging Program Evasion: A $1,000 pass-through fee if a program/campaign is found to be using techniques such as snowshoeing, or unauthorized number replacement/recycling.
Content Violation: After prior warning, a $10,000 pass-through fee may be imposed for each unique instance of content violating the T-Mobile Code of Conduct involving the same sender/content provider. This includes SHAFT (Sex, Hate, Alcohol, Firearms, Tobacco) violations, spam, phishing, and messaging that meets the Severity 0 violation as defined in the CTIA Short Code Monitoring Handbook.
3> United Kingdom -
Compliance considerations
SMS-to-voice functionality is in widespread use in the UK, and as a result, Carrier partners will not reject messages sent to landlines. Please be aware of this fact because it may not be the desired behavior for your application. If this is not the desired behavior, Carrier partners Support can help.
Carrier partners strongly encourage customers to review proposed use cases with qualified legal counsel to make sure that they comply with all applicable laws.
4> India -
Compliance considerations
To ensure carrier partners are in compliance with local regulation, domestic transactional, domestic promotional, and international SMS messages are sent through mobile operators’ International Long Distance Operator (ILDO) connections. Pre-registered Alphanumeric Sender IDs are not supported and messages are delivered with random ILDO-approved short codes in the format 5NNNN—5NNNNNNNN (e.g., 54321). Messages will bypass India’s Do-Not-Disturb (DND) database and will be delivered without any time-of-day restrictions.
Carrier partners strongly encourage customers to review proposed use cases with qualified legal counsel to make sure that they comply with all applicable laws.
5> France -
Compliance considerations
French mobile networks block marketing SMS traffic between 10pm and 8am, on Sundays, and on French public holidays. If messages are sent during these restricted times, they will be queued and sent the following day.
Bouygues Telecom does not support Unicode body encoding for application-to-person (A2P) SMS. All Unicode characters will therefore be replaced with GSM characters to ensure delivery.
Carrier partners strongly encourage customers to review proposed use cases with qualified legal counsel to make sure that they comply with all applicable laws.
6> Malaysia -
Compliance considerations
Per local regulations, only Person-to-Person (P2P) messages may be sent via Malaysian domestic long codes. If you can guarantee that you only send legitimate P2P messages, please reach out to Carrier partners Customer Services to ensure the proper domestic long code connectivity is enabled on your account. For Application-to-Person (A2P) messages, you can use any international long codes.
For all messages submitted to Malaysia, you must include your brand name to avoid blocking and filtering by mobile operators. Brand names in message content allow mobile operators to identify which organizations are sending messages to their subscribers. The Sender ID of A2P messages to Malaysia is overwritten with a Shortcode Sender ID. Sending political, religious, and gambling-related content is strictly prohibited.
Malaysian mobile operators require the content header RM 0.00 is added to every message sent to Malaysia. This header tells the receiving subscriber that they were not charged for receiving the SMS message. Sending your messages without this header will result in the content being truncated or the message failing entirely. Concatenated messages are supported by all mobile operators except Digi Malaysia which delivers them as multiple separate messages.
7> Philippines -
Compliance considerations
Mobile operators do not allow messages with long international codes. These will be overwritten with a generic Alphanumeric Sender ID outside of Carrier partners’s platform. Carrier partners highly recommend sending from a registered Alphanumeric Sender ID.
Sender IDs containing the words “TEST”, “MESSAGE”, “SMS”, and/or permutations based on those words are not allowed. Sender IDs that portray other networks as “SMART” and/or “SUN” and/or permutations based on those words — for example, “SMARTMONEY”, “SUNCELL”, “SMART LIVE”, “SMARTLOAD”, etc.) are not allowed.
You may send commercial and promotional advertisements, surveys, and other broadcast/push messages only to subscribers who have specifically opted-in to receive such messages. PTEs and content providers shall also provide methods for subscribers who have opted-in to opt-out in the future. Regular opt-out instructions must be sent once per week for daily subscriptions or once per month for weekly subscriptions.
Spam messages are those which promote or offer financial loans, real estate, products and services, and sometimes relate to elections and other political messages. Adult content or any mention of alcohol, drugs, gambling, politics, and/or tobacco is prohibited.
Shortened URLs in message content are strictly not allowed, and customers sending banking related content with a URL must ensure that message templates are allow-listed. Sending a URL that is not allow-listed will result in message failure.
8> South Africa
Compliance considerations
Direct marketing messages are regulated under article 16 of the Wireless Application Service Providers’ Association (WASPA) Code of Conduct. Unless a consumer has expressly or implicitly requested or agreed otherwise, marketing messages should not be sent on: Sundays and public holidays; Saturdays before 9am and after 1pm; and all other days between the hours of 8pm and 8am the following day.
9> Sweden
Compliance considerations
Swedish mobile operators are blocking and filtering SMS content containing web addresses (URLs). If your SMS content carries a web URL, kindly reach out to Carrier partners customer services to get your SMS content added to an allow list to prevent delivery failure. When content registration is complete, you must send the messages with an International Long Code Sender ID or an Alphanumeric Sender ID. Sending messages using Domestic Long Code Sender ID may result in messages containing a web URL being filtered.
10> Turkey
Compliance considerations
Because Turkish carriers filter traffic with Numeric and unregistered Alphanumeric Sender IDs, be sure to pre-register your Alphanumeric Sender ID to ensure message delivery. Person-to-person (P2P) traffic, as well as content related to gambling, politics, and religion are prohibited.
From February 15, 2021 — and until further notice — submission of promotional traffic to Turkey will be prohibited. Please do not submit such traffic as it may result in your messages and your registered Sender ID being blocked. It may also result in financial penalties.