Guidelines

United Arab Emirates (AE)

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Locale Summary
Locale name	United Arab Emirates
ISO code The International Organization for Standardization two character representation for the given locale.	AE
Region	Middle East & Africa
Mobile country code A three digit code associated with the given locale and used in conjunction with a Mobile Network Code to uniquely identify mobile networks.	424
Dialing code The dialing prefix used to establish a call or send an SMS from one locale to the given locale.	+971

Guidelines
Two-way SMS supported Whether Twilio supports two-way SMS in the given locale.	No
Twilio concatenated message support Concatenation refers to the capability of splitting a message that is too long to be sent in one SMS into smaller pieces and then joining the pieces at the receiving end so that the receiver sees the message as one.	Yes
Message length How many characters can be sent given a particular message encoding before the message will be split into concatenated segments.	160 Characters
Twilio MMS support Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) provides a standards-based means to send pictures and video to mobile phones.	Converted to SMS with embedded URL
Sending SMS to landline numbers How Twilio handles an SMS message destined for landline telephone number.	You cannot send SMS to a landline destination number: the Twilio REST API will throw a 400 response with error code 21614, the message will not appear in the logs, and the account will not be charged.
Compliance considerations Twilio strongly encourages customers to review proposed use cases with qualified legal counsel to make sure that they comply with all applicable laws. This table lists some general best practices.	Mobile carriers in the United Arab Emirates require all SMS messages to be submitted from registered Sender ID only. Any SMS sent from unregistered Sender ID will be blocked. All promotional Alphanumeric Sender IDs must carry an AD- prefix, and this counts towards the 11-character limit. Promotional messages to the UAE can not be sent between 09:00pm to 07:00am local time. Messages sent during the restricted time period will be queued outside the Twilio platform and will only be processed for delivery during the allowed time period. Sending gambling, adult content, money/loan, political, religious, controlled substance, cannabis, and alcohol related content is strictly prohibited. Messages containing URL, WhatsApp/LINE chat links, and phone number in body are also not allowed. Twilio strongly encourages customers to review proposed use cases with qualified legal counsel to make sure that they comply with all applicable laws. The following are some general best practices: Get opt-in consent from each end-user before sending any communication to them, particularly 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.

Phone Numbers & Sender ID

Alphanumeric

	International Pre-registration	Domestic Pre-registration	Dynamic
Operator network capability Whether mobile operators in the given country support the feature.	Required		Not Supported
Twilio supported Whether Twilio supports the feature for the given country.	Supported Learn more	Supported Learn more	Not Supported
Sender ID preserved In some countries sender IDs for certain sender types are not preserved and are changed for compliance and/or deliverability reasons. In these countries mobile subscribers will see a different ‘from sender ID’ than the one sent by you.	Yes	Yes	N/A
Provisioning time Provisioning is the process of getting the sender ID approved and registered with mobile networks (depending on country requirements). Provisioning time is how long this process takes in the given country.	2 weeks	2 weeks	N/A
UCS-2 support	Supported	Supported	N/A
Use case restrictions	Messages containing adult, gambling, or religious content are strictly forbidden. URL shortners should be avoided as the local networks tend to filter messages containing them. Please note that Promotional messaging is only supported for Domestic Entities and Promotional Content is not permitted for International Entities.	Messages containing adult, gambling, or religious content are strictly forbidden. All promotional Alphanumeric Sender IDs must carry an AD- prefix. Promotional messages to the UAE can not be sent between 09:00pm to 07:00am local time. Messages sent during the restricted time period will be queued outside the Twilio platform and will only be processed for delivery during the allowed time period. URL shortners should be avoided as the local networks tend to filter messages containing them. Due to limitations related to the local infrastructure we suggest our clients to use UCS2 encoding when submitting messages containing the EURO symbol "€".	Alphanumeric Sender IDs are only supported through pre-registration.
Best practices	For all health services related Sender ID registration requests, we will require an approval letter from the UAE health authorities. UAE is a country very sensitive to URLs. Even if the Sender ID gets registered, sending messages containing a URL that is not checked and allowlisted may produce issues in the delivery so we would like to suggest our customers to proactively provide us with the full list of URLs they intend to use during Sender ID Registration procedure as sample SMS messages.	For all health services related Sender ID registration requests, we will require an approval letter from the UAE health authorities. UAE is a country very sensitive to URLs. Even if the Sender ID gets registered, sending messages containing a URL that is not checked and allowlisted may produce issues in the delivery so we would like to suggest our customers to proactively provide us with the full list of URLs they intend to use during Sender ID Registration procedure as sample SMS messages.

Long codes and short codes

	Long code domestic	Long code international	Short code
Operator network capability Whether mobile operators in the given country support the feature.	Not Supported	Not Supported	Not Supported
Twilio supported Whether Twilio supports the feature for the given country.	---	Not Supported	---
Sender ID preserved In some countries sender IDs for certain sender types are not preserved and are changed for compliance and/or deliverability reasons. In these countries mobile subscribers will see a different ‘from sender ID’ than the one sent by you.	---	No	---
Provisioning time Provisioning is the process of getting the sender ID approved and registered with mobile networks (depending on country requirements). Provisioning time is how long this process takes in the given country.	N/A	N/A	N/A
UCS-2 support	N/A	N/A	N/A
Use case restrictions	N/A	N/A	N/A
Best practices	N/A	N/A	N/A

For the benefit of all our customers, these guidelines are provided to help you comply with applicable requirements and to help ensure Twilio's platform remains compliant with global telecommunications ecosystem requirements. These guidelines represent our current understanding of common compliance requirements generally applicable to Twilio and its customers, and do not constitute legal advice. By posting these guidelines, Twilio makes no assurances regarding the legal compliance of your application built using our APIs. You are expected to understand and abide by all compliance obligations applicable to your specific application. You should check these pages regularly for updates as telecommunications ecosystem requirements continue to evolve and change, and the information below may be updated or changed without notice.