Country Summary
| Country name | India |
|---|---|
| ISO code | IN |
| Region | Asia |
| Mobile country code | 404, 405 |
| Dialing code | +91 |
| Major carriers | Airtel, Vodafone India, Idea Cellular, Reliance Jio, BSNL, Aircel, Reliance Communication |
Guidelines
| Two-way SMS supported | No |
|---|---|
| Number portability available | Yes |
| Twilio concatenated message support | Yes |
| Message length | ----- |
| Twilio MMS support | Converted to SMS with embedded URL |
| Sending SMS to landline numbers | 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 fully supports all types of traffic to India including promotional, transactional, and International Long Distance Operator (ILDO) messages. You must submit promotional or marketing messages between 09:00 and 21:00 local time; anything submitted outside this time will be processed the next day. Sender IDs will be overwritten with a 6-digit short code (XX-NNNNNN), and messages sent to numbers registered in the do-not-disturb database will be blocked. You can find more information here: https://support.twilio.com/hc/en-us/articles/223134167-Limitations-sending-SMS-messages-to-Indian-mobile-devices You should send transactional content like alerts, banking, and OTPs through a carrier-approved transactional connection. To bypass the do-not-disturb database and submit messages at any time of the day, you must: 1. Submit all your message templates for whitelisting 2. Register a 6-character, no special characters, and all uppercase alpha sender IDs. Sending non-whitelisted content would result in delivery failure and sending promotional or marketing content through the transactional connection would result in a penalty imposed by mobile operators. You must submit over-the-top (OTT) traffic originating outside India through a dedicated connection and not through conventional promotional or transactional connections. OTT messages need to go through mobile carriers' ILDO connections and have to be terminated with either a short code or a long number. Mobile carriers are actively blocking OTT messages submitted through non-authorized connections.
|
Phone Numbers & Sender ID
| Preregistered | Alphanumeric | Long Code | Short Code | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Operator network capability | --- | --- | Not Supported | --- |
| Twilio supported | --- | --- | Supported | Not Supported |
| Sender ID preserved | Yes | No | No | No |
| Provisioning time | 1 week | -- | -- | -- |
| UCS-2 support | -- | -- | -- | -- |
| Use case restrictions | Only transactional messages: 2-factor authentication codes, pin codes, delivery notifications, etc. No marketing messages. | Must be used for transactional content. Due to regulations, sender IDs will be prefixed with an India 2-letter prefix source (YZ-ABCDEF) where Y connotes the service provider sending the SMS and Z connotes the telecom circle from which the SMS was sent. | Could only be used for promotional content | -- |
| Best practices | By default, Twilio sends messages to India as promotional messages. Register your sender ID when sending transactional content to bypass the DND database/time restriction. Create a subaccount and separate transactional SMS traffic to ensure compliance. | By default, Twilio sends messages to India as promotional messages. Register your sender ID when sending transactional content to bypass the DND database/time restriction. Create a subaccount and separate transactional SMS traffic to ensure compliance. | -- | -- |
| Preregistered | |
|---|---|
| Operator network capability | --- |
| Twilio supported | --- |
| Sender ID preserved | Yes |
| Provisioning time | 1 week |
| UCS-2 support | -- |
| Use case restrictions | Only transactional messages: 2-factor authentication codes, pin codes, delivery notifications, etc. No marketing messages. |
| Best practices | By default, Twilio sends messages to India as promotional messages. Register your sender ID when sending transactional content to bypass the DND database/time restriction. Create a subaccount and separate transactional SMS traffic to ensure compliance. |
| Alphanumeric | |
|---|---|
| Operator network capability | --- |
| Twilio supported | --- |
| Sender ID preserved | No |
| Provisioning time | -- |
| UCS-2 support | -- |
| Use case restrictions | Must be used for transactional content. Due to regulations, sender IDs will be prefixed with an India 2-letter prefix source (YZ-ABCDEF) where Y connotes the service provider sending the SMS and Z connotes the telecom circle from which the SMS was sent. |
| Best practices | By default, Twilio sends messages to India as promotional messages. Register your sender ID when sending transactional content to bypass the DND database/time restriction. Create a subaccount and separate transactional SMS traffic to ensure compliance. |
| Long Code | |
|---|---|
| Operator network capability | Not Supported |
| Twilio supported | Supported |
| Sender ID preserved | No |
| Provisioning time | -- |
| UCS-2 support | -- |
| Use case restrictions | Could only be used for promotional content |
| Best practices | -- |
| Short Code | |
|---|---|
| Operator network capability | --- |
| Twilio supported | Not Supported |
| Sender ID preserved | No |
| Provisioning time | -- |
| UCS-2 support | -- |
| Use case restrictions | -- |
| Best practices | -- |
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.