Guidelines

South Africa (ZA)

We've compiled regulatory and compliance information to help ensure you're communicating effectively and compliantly around the world.

Locale Summary

Locale name

South Africa

ISO code
The International Organization for Standardization two character representation for the given locale.

ZA

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.

655

Dialing code
The dialing prefix used to establish a call or send an SMS from one locale to the given locale.

+27

Guidelines

Two-way SMS supported
Whether Twilio supports two-way SMS in the given locale.

Yes

Number portability available
Whether number portability is available in the given locale.

Yes

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*
For certain sender ID types this may not be supported. Where messages are split and rejoined may vary based on character encoding.

Message length
How many characters can be sent given a particular message encoding before the message will be split into concatenated segments.

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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.


Message delivery to M2M numbers is on best effort basis only.

Direct marketing messages are regulated under article 16 of the Wireless Application Service Providers’ Association (WASPA) Code of Conduct. Unless a consumer has expressly or implicitly requested or agreed otherwise, marketing messages should not be sent on: Sundays and public holidays; Saturdays before 9am and after 1pm; and all other days between the hours of 8pm and 8am the following day.

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:

  1. Get opt-in consent from each end user before sending any communication to them, particular for marketing or other non-essential communications.
  2. Only communicate during an end user's daytime hours unless it is urgent.
  3. SMS campaigns should support HELP/STOP messages, and similar messages, in the end user's local language.
  4. Do not contact end users on do-not-call or do-not-disturb registries.

Phone Numbers & Sender ID

Alphanumeric
 

Pre-registration

Dynamic

Operator network capability
Whether mobile operators in the given country support the feature.

Not Supported

Not Supported

Twilio supported
Whether Twilio supports the feature for the given country.

Not Supported

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.

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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

UCS-2 support

N/A

N/A

Use case restrictions

N/A

N/A

Best practices

N/A

N/A

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.

Supported

Not Supported

Not Supported

Twilio supported
Whether Twilio supports the feature for the given country.

Supported

Supported

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

No

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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

Supported

Supported

N/A

Use case restrictions

Domestic numbers are not able to receive inbound messages from the Grapevine network in South Africa.

International longcode sender ID would be overwritten into a random local longcode outside Twilio's platform.

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.