# Bulk SMS to Nigeria from abroad: DND, sender ID and price

> What a foreign sender needs to know about Nigeria: the do-not-disturb registry, sender ID registration with MTN, Airtel, Glo and 9mobile, permitted hours, encoding and the price per message.

Updated 2026-09-21. Level: Intermediate. By SMSMeteor.

## Key takeaways

- DND blocks marketing at operator level; transactional is exempt.
- Sender names must be registered; MTN is the strictest.
- Marketing only between 08:00 and 20:00 local time.
- Test on all four operators before a large send.

## The market in brief

Nigeria is one of Africa's largest SMS markets, served by four operators: MTN, Airtel, Glo and 9mobile. It is heavily used for banking alerts, one-time codes and promotions, and the regulator, the Nigerian Communications Commission, has rules on all three. Numbers start with +234 followed by ten digits without the leading zero.

## Do Not Disturb

Subscribers can opt out of promotional messages at operator level by texting a short code; a full opt-out blocks all marketing traffic to the number whatever consent you hold. Filtering happens at the operator, so blocked messages fail, or are dropped, after you have been charged for the attempt. Transactional traffic such as codes and bank alerts is not subject to the registry. Two consequences: keep transactional and promotional traffic clearly separate, and expect a share of failures on marketing sends to lists you did not collect yourself recently.

## Sender ID

Nigerian operators deliver alphanumeric sender names only when they are registered, and MTN is the strictest of the four. Until a name is registered, messages go out from a shared numeric sender, so nothing is blocked; only the branding waits. Put your brand in the first words of the text. For regular traffic, registration is worth the wait of a few days to a few weeks; support prepares the file with you.

## Hours and format

Promotional messages are limited to daytime: the default window applied to Nigeria is 08:00 to 20:00 local time (West Africa Time, UTC+1, no daylight saving). Codes and alerts can bypass it with the transactional flag. English text fits GSM-7, so one segment holds 160 characters; the naira sign and emoji switch the message to Unicode at 70.

## Price

International termination into Nigeria is priced far above local traffic by the operators, which is why large platforms quote 20 to 40 US cents per message. Our published rate for Nigeria is $0.0326 per segment, the same for one message and for a million, with no setup or monthly fee. The [Nigeria page](https://smsmeteor.com/coverage/ng) has the operators covered and the current rate.

## Checklist

- Numbers in E.164: +234 and ten digits.

- Brand in the first words; register the sender name if you send regularly.

- Marketing between 08:00 and 20:00 only, to people who opted in, with a STOP.

- Transactional flag for codes and alerts.

- Test to a handset on each of the four operators before a large send.

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Source: https://smsmeteor.com/guides/bulk-sms-to-nigeria-from-abroad (HTML). Generated by SMSMeteor from the same data as the page. Summary of the whole site: https://smsmeteor.com/llms.txt