Country Summary

Government Directive (updated on 4 Aug 2023)

Due to a Government Directive, SMS services are currently barred in some parts of Haryana, India. You may observe low delivery in this region.

Sender ID Guidelines

*To initiate the Sender ID registration process, please check Global Sender ID Portal or contact your account manager or support

Important update & action required for Domestic DLT registered Customers

Re-Validation of all Headers and Templates on DLT platform

On 16th February  2023, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) issued a Regulatory Direction regarding measures to ‘Curb misuse of Headers and Content Templates’ under Telecom Commercial Communication Customer Preference Regulation, 2018. 

Under this Regulatory Direction, if you have registered on the India DLT Platform(s), you will need to take the following actions on or before the below-listed deadlines:

• Re-Verify all your Headers (Sender ID) on the DLT platform that you have registered with. Release/surrender the headers that are not in use. Headers that are not validated on or before 30th June 2023 will be deactivated.
• Re-Validate all your Content Templates registered on the DLT platform and make sure they are compliant with the 'variable' format on or before 30th June 2023:
  • All content templates (New or Old) will be limited to have up to 2 non-consecutive variables only. In case of any exigency, a 3rd variable might be allowed with specific reasons provided to the DLT platform provider during the registration. The variable length should not exceed 30 characters, including the spaces.
  • Templates that are not validated or do not adhere to the 'variable' format by the deadline will be deactivated.

Failure to perform the above actions will lead to your Header (Sender ID) and Content Templates being blacklisted over DLT due to non-compliance. The India DLT platform providers should have sent out the related notification to their registered customers. If you haven’t received the notification yet from your respective DLT platform(s), please reach out to them directly.

Since Vonage has no visibility on what you have registered on the DLT platform(s), unfortunately we can't help you in the above Re-Verify and Re-Validate process. We request you to kindly go through these Directions thoroughly and perform the required actions ASAP to avoid any traffic disruption towards India.

Deactivation of Numeric Headers on DLT platform

Due to a new regulatory directive from Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), with effect from 1st May 2023, the industry is implementing the following actions that will affect DLT registered customers who are sending India DLT domestic traffic.

• Alpha Headers (Sender IDs) should be used when sending India Domestic Promotional SMS and Numeric Headers (Sender IDs) are no longer allowed for Promotional SMS starting from 1st May 2023. Customers should change their existing Numeric Headers to Alpha Headers in their respective DLT portals on or before the listed deadline. 
  • After the deadline, no SMS with Number Headers will be passed and all Numeric Headers used to send Promotional SMS will be banned. Alpha Headers should be used for all forms of communication. All promotional, service, and transactional traffic will now be permitted to be transmitted from Alpha Headers.
• Service Explicit (SE) traffic will receive the same treatment as the Promotional category.
  • All currently used SE templates will be moved to the Promotional category and delivered only after preference and consent scrubbing, protecting your real subscribers from spam and potential fraud. There won't be any more SE templates registered in the future. Only 3 types of message templates will be available: promotional, service (implicit/inferred), and transactional (limited to banking OTP).
• Digitally Acquired and Verified consents.
  • All existing consents/opt-ins will be treated as invalid and only Digitally Acquired and Verified consents will be used for scrubbing promotional (including the migrated SE) content. 
• Review of all Service Implicit/Inferred (SI) templates.
  • No service implicit (SI) templates should be used to cross-sell or upsell. The variables must be used carefully to avoid conveying any commercial messages. Anomalies could result in punishment, which may range from a monetary fine to being blacklisted or even both. Additionally, the Operators will make an effort to evaluate all of your SI (Service Implicit) templates and block any/all that might be used for marketing reasons.

Please note that customers should start to login to the respective DLT platform portals to do the necessary review and changes as advised by the DLT providers ASAP. Should you have any questions regarding the DLT registration process, please contact the DLT portal provider directly. You can also contact your Vonage account manager or Support team if you need further assistance from Vonage.

Overview

Vonage supports Domestic and International enterprise SMS business to India.

To follow the regulations of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), domestic enterprises can only submit A2P SMS through domestic connections to end recipients after successful registration with Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT).

DLT aims to create a cleaner and transparent system in the Indian telecom industry and curb Unsolicited Commercial Communication (UCC) and an enhanced mobile subscriber policy. Information on the regulation can be reviewed here.

Any enterprise that fails to pre-register Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) will become non-compliant and will not be able to send A2P SMS to end recipients via domestic connections.

International Enterprises are not affected by these DLT regulations. International customers can contact support or their account managers to enable ILDO routing for them if they intend to send pure OTP/Trans or Opt-in promo sms.

DLT Requirements (For Domestic Customers only)

• It is mandatory to have a brand name in all categories of messages.
• The exact text should match your application to suppliers to the DLT Platform.
• Only Approved Templates should be submitted to Vonage.
• Header Mapping against each template should be verified.
  • Where header ‘X’ is mapped on the DLT platform with a ‘Y’ text, then it should be used accordingly.
  • If you wish to use any other header, changes on the DLT platform should be done accordingly.
• The variable length should not exceed 30 characters.
  • 30 characters per variable including the spaces and the content templates can be registered with variables in GSM (English) characters and in Unicode (for local dialect characters).
  • If it is more than 30, you will need to add more variables but a maximum of 2 non-consecutive variables are allowed in total.

Registering for DLT (Domestic Customers Only)

To send any SMS through domestic connections, all enterprises must register their Principal Entity, Headers, Templates with the Brand Name, and provide consent on one of the approved DLT systems:

• Vodafone-Idea Ltd DLT Portal
• BSNL DLT Portal
• Airtel DLT Portal
• Reliance JIO DLT Portal
• Videocon DLT Portal

Maintaining Compliance While Submitting Messages to the Vonage Platform

After you have registered for DLT with one of the portals, there are two ways to ensure your traffic is compliant with DLT.

Vonage is not responsible for domestic entities registering for DLT. We do not verify if domestic entities have correctly provided their PEID, Sender ID, and Template IDs.

If a message errors due to these fields not being provided or valid, the carrier does this will be reflected in the Delivery Receipt webhook and SMPP DLR.

You can read a tutorial by our Developer Relations team discussing DLT and how to implement it.

Submit Required DLT Parameters with Every Request

1. Make the necessary changes on your end so that your Entity ID, Sender ID, Header, and Templates (as registered with DLT) are sent with every API submission (see additional properties you must use below).
2. Inform Vonage in a support request to enable routing for Option 1 for your Sender ID.
3. Start sending SMS after you have received confirmation routing has been enabled for you.

Additional Parameters or Properties to Support DLT

Vonage has added functionality within our Send SMS API endpoint or via SMPP to allow domestic entities to comply with the DLT regulation by providing both their PEID (unique entity ID) and the template ID for every SMS request made. (for Option 1 customers as stated above)

The API properties used in this endpoint are to be matched exactly as listed below:

• ‘entity-id’ parameter needs to be the DLT approved PEID (unique Entity ID)
• ‘content-id’ parameter needs to be the DLT approved Template ID
• ‘from’ parameter needs to be the DLT approved Sender ID (Header ID)
• If you use SMPP to send SMS messages with Vonage, the following fields apply:
  • 0x1470 needs to be the DLT approved PEID (unique Entity ID)
  • 0x1471 needs to be the DLT approved Template ID
  • The Sender ID needs to be the DLT approved Sender ID (Header ID)

Vonage Error Codes for DLT Related Issues

SMS Types

By default, users will fall into the International promotional (SMS without opt-in) category with restrictions as mentioned below.

If you are an International user or have a different SMS type than is listed below, contact your account manager or submit a support request.

Sender ID

Domestic Customer: Alpha SenderID supported. Refer to DLT registration as mentioned above for SID registration. For enterprises that finished the DLT application successfully, the SMS Sender ID will be prefixed with an additional two letters, depending on which final operator the number belongs to. A full list of prefixes can be found here: India Pre-registered Sender ID Prefixes.

International Customer: Alpha Sender ID is not supported for International customers and will be changed to a random short code. Please contact Support or your account manager for ILDO route if your sms is purely transactional or Opt-in promo type.

Do Not Call Registry/Do Not Disturb Service

Promotional SMS are barred and will get blocked by operators to numbers those registered in the Indian NDNC (National Do Not Call registry).

SMS delivery is blocked between 21:00 – 10:00 hours IST for end recipients who registered with Do Not Disturb Service (DND). This means promotional SMS can only be delivered only between 10:00 - 21:00 hours IST.

Operators do not support delivery notifications for messages sent via promotional routes with numeric headers.

Any Vonage customer expecting to send promotional content to their end-users under the Service Explicit category with legitimate PE ID and content template registrations are being advised to have their end user customer consents re uploaded to their DLT portal via the consent upload menu ASAP to avoid any delivery interruptions.

Notice

Of late, Operators have been receiving many UCC complaints from DND-registered subscribers for receipt of promotional messages from Service headers.

In view of these unceasing complaints, effective on 8th February 2022, Operator will be making changes in the scrubbing logic for all service explicit messages to block them based on DND preferences. Since consents override DND preferences, we encourage you to upload consents via consents upload menu that is available on Operator DLT portal.

Limitation to Avoid Potential SMS Flooding

Local regulations specify limitations to the number of messages that can be sent to the same number:

• More than six messages to the same destination number within an hour with the same sender or text may be blocked.
• Users may not receive more than a total of 200 SMS per day across all incoming streams.

Unicode

Unicode is supported for All India Networks.

Concatenated SMS

Concatenated SMS is supported for All India Networks.

Delivery Receipts

• Transactional/OTP Traffic: DLR is supported and its reliable delivery receipts.
• Promotional Traffic: DLR is not supported, or its unreliable Network DLR.

Traffic Restriction by Political Reason

Messages towards Jammu and Kashmir networks (for example, 405/55 - Airtel J&K) will be blocked by the government due to political sensitivity.

Political SMS is prohibited throughout the country during an election period.

Additional Information

For more information, see the following articles:

• Global SMS Features Overview (Outbound-Only)
• Global SMS Numbers Features Overview