Canada

Business running an SMS messaging program in Canada must comply with certain industry guidelines and mobile operator policies. Two industry guides you must comply with are the Canadian Common Short Code Application Guidelines and Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation.

All messaging in the Canada is inherently two-way, and alpha-numeric message originators are not allowed. However, a wide variety of message originators are supported, including:

  • Dedicated short codes
  • Text-enabled toll-free numbers
  • Text-enabled landlines

Help with messaging in North America

We've written the following topics to help you with your messaging programs. We endeavor to keep this information up to date; however, because the legislation around messaging often moves rapidly, we cannot warrant or guarantee any compliance information in these topics. Therefore, before launching a program, ensure that you've checked the most recent industry and mobile operator guidelines.

The key details for mobile messaging in Canada are below. We have full one-way reach to all mobile operators in this region. For a datasheet that contains more information, such as best practices and the proportion of subscribers on each mobile operator, please contact us.

See help for an explanation of each field.

Region

North America

Dialing Code

1

1-way

Yes

2-way

Short Code, Long Code, TELL (Text Enabled Land Lines), TETFN (Text Enabled Toll Free Numbers)

2-way Setup Time

1

Primary Character Encoding

GSM

Max Characters for Single-part message

160

Multi-part messages

Yes (Country Restrictions)

Delivery Receipts

Yes

Mobile Number Portability

Yes

Alphanumeric Originator maintained on 1-way

No

Alphanumeric Originator Registration required

Alphanumeric not supported

Short Code maintained on 1-way

Yes*

Local Long Code maintained on 1-way

Yes*

International Long Code maintained on 1-way

No

* Notes

Enterprise A2P messaging must generally use short codes. Long codes are allowed for low volume transactional traffic only. Multipart SMS, while possible, is not approved by CWTA. Regulatory restrictions from the operators mean that multiple messages should not be sent unless expected by the end user. Aggressive spam filtering on Rogers. Concatenation of more than 2 Messages may be filtered.

Guidance / Restrictions

Please check the help topics listed on this page. Contact us if you need further details on Canada's regulations.