Amazon Pinpoint now supports International Long Distance Operator (ILDO) routes to send SMS messages to India

Posted on: Jun 19, 2020

Starting June 20, 2020, Amazon Pinpoint customers who send SMS with an alphanumeric sender ID to Indian recipients must register their use case. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India recently updated the regulations on commercial SMS sending. Senders who have a local presence in India are required to register their use cases through the Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) system. When you successfully register your use case, you can use an alphabetic sender ID to deliver your transactional messages or numeric sender ID to deliver your promotional messages to recipients who have Indian phone numbers. Messages that you send using a registered sender ID are billed at the standard rates. For current message sending rates, see the Amazon Pinpoint Pricing page.

Senders who don't qualify for this registration process can still send messages to recipients with Indian phone numbers by using International Long Distance Operator (ILDO) routes. When you send a message using ILDO routes and do not specify a sender ID or attempt to use a sender ID that has not been fully registered, your message is sent using a random numeric identifier. Alternatively, you can purchase a dedicated short code to send messages to Indian phone numbers over the ILDO route if you require a fixed identity. Messages that you send through ILDO routes are billed at a rate of USD $0.02171 per message.  

If you currently send messages to recipients in India, you have to choose to either register for a sender ID or start using ILDO routes. If you don't choose one of these options by June 20, 2020, the Indian mobile phone carriers may reject your messages and they may not be delivered. Additionally, we will move your sending automatically to ILDO routes by June 29, 2020. New customers who have not registered on DLT can send messages to recipients in India automatically using ILDO routes.  

For more information about registering an alphanumeric sender ID to use when sending to recipients in India, see Requesting sender IDs in the Amazon Pinpoint User Guide. To apply for an Indian short code, see Requesting dedicated short code in the Amazon Pinpoint User Guide.