What DLT is
Since 2020 the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India requires commercial SMS to pass through a distributed-ledger system run by the operators. Every sender, every sender name and every message template is registered on it, and messages that do not match a registered template are blocked. The purpose is to make each commercial message traceable to a legal entity and a consent.
What gets registered
- The entity: an Indian business, with its registration documents.
- Headers: the sender names, six letters for transactional and service traffic, numeric for promotional.
- Content templates: the text of each message with variables marked, categorised as transactional, service or promotional.
- Consent templates for promotional traffic, checked against the national do-not-disturb preferences.
Without an Indian entity
A foreign sender without a registered Indian entity cannot hold a DLT header. Traffic then enters India on international routes, which operators price above domestic traffic and deliver from numeric or shared senders rather than from your brand. One-time codes and service messages to your own users deliver this way; large promotional campaigns under your own header do not, because they require exactly the registration you do not have. India is therefore marked "registration required" on our India page, and messages leave from a shared sender unless a registration exists.
Content and timing
Promotional messages are restricted to daytime hours and blocked for numbers on the do-not-disturb registry. Keep codes free of links, identify your brand in the first words, and keep to GSM-7 where you can. Messages in Hindi or other Indian scripts are Unicode: 70 characters per segment, 67 per part.
Price
Domestic DLT traffic costs a fraction of a cent because it is sold inside India by Indian providers to registered entities. International routes cost several cents: large platforms quote 6 to 8 US cents. Our published rate for India is $0.0256 per segment, with no monthly fee and no template fee.
Deciding
If India is your main market and you have, or can form, an Indian entity, register on DLT with a domestic provider: it is cheaper and carries your header. If India is one of many destinations for codes and notifications, an international route is the practical answer, and it needs no paperwork. This guide is general information, not legal advice.
Something unclear or out of date? Write to [email protected]; corrections are folded back into the guide and the update date changes.