Before we begin

Due to regulatory requirements, there is sometimes a need for documents to be signed by customers to ensure that registrations are done on behalf of customers that have the right to use the Sender ID. This serves to ensure that traffic is coming from legitimate sources and minimises any potential misuse.

This article outlines the documentation requirements for a pre-registration in India.

Things to note

• Before using Twilio to send SMS in India, customers must first register on a Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) portal — a blockchain-based system managed by Indian mobile operators. As part of this registration, customers are required to provide key parameters such as Entity ID and Template ID when submitting SMS messages through Twilio.

• Indian telecom carriers enforce strict message template allowlisting, which means only SMS templates that have been approved on the DLT portal and whitelisted by the telecom providers can be used with the registered Sender ID to send messages.

• During the initial Sender ID registration process, both the Sender ID and selected SMS templates are submitted for whitelisting by the providers.
  For any additional SMS templates that need to be used after the initial setup:

  1. First, get them approved on the DLT portal.

  2. Then, email senderid@twilio.com informing the same with the relevant details so the Twilio Sender ID Team can request whitelisting on the provider side.

• Please ensure that all message templates intended for use in India are clearly listed in the DLT_Portal_India_Template document when submitting your request.

Instructions

To register your Alphanumeric Sender ID you must:

1. Register the Sender ID in the DLT Portal, a third-party platform. This step is independent from Twilio and we have no control over its process.
2. Create a PE-TM Chain on the respective DLT portal (check the instructions below)
3. Customers download the DLT details from the portal and update the following spreadsheet with the requested information on it(See the attachment for an example). 
   • DLT_Portal_India_Template
   • A screenshot from the DLT portal is also required which shows basic information like Entity ID, DLT template ID, Header, communication type etc. 
4. Customers submit the spreadsheet, screenshot of the approved telemarketer ID and your Principal Entity ID and the screenshot of your DLT portal to Twilio using the pre-registration registration form.

Information on PE-TM chain (Principal Entity - Telemarketer chain)

As per the TRAI guidelines (dated August 20th, 2024) effective from December 11th, 2024. Operators have started scrubbing messages accordingly.

Kindly log in to your DLT portal and ensure that the following Telemarketer IDs are created and approved. (You can find detailed instructions related to the relevant DLT portal within the TM BINDING User Manuals and Direction Documents zip file linked below.)

1. If the PE-TM (Principal Entity–Telemarketer) link is inactive, mismatched, or blacklisted, it may result in message delivery failures.
2. If these IDs have not yet been mapped, please do so through any of the DLT operators you are currently using to complete the approval process.
3. Once the PE TM chain has been created for the following Telemarketers, the respective Telemarketers will approve the chain on their side as well.
4. After TM approval, we will inform you and the final approval needs to be done on your side to complete the complete PE-TM chain.

After the Sender ID is confirmed to be registered, you will be requested to test the message templates and confirm successful delivery.