DLT, explained
DLT stands for Distributed Ledger Technology, a blockchain-based system that India's telecom operators run under rules from TRAI, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India. Under TRAI's Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations, 2018, any business that sends commercial SMS to Indian numbers must register on an operator's DLT platform, such as those run by Jio, Airtel, Vi or BSNL. The aim is to cut spam and fraud by making every commercial message traceable to a registered sender.
Registration has several parts. The business registers as a principal entity and receives an entity ID. It registers headers, the short sender IDs, usually six characters, that appear in place of a phone number. And it registers content templates: the exact wording of each message, with placeholders for variables such as a name or an amount, under a category such as transactional, service or promotional. Promotional messages cannot go to people who have blocked them through their Do Not Disturb preferences.
When a message is sent, the operator checks the header and the template against the registry. If the text does not match a registered template, the message is blocked, which is the most common reason business SMS quietly fails in India. Links inside messages must now be whitelisted too. Before building any SMS workflow, register the templates you need and keep a note of their template IDs. DigiPix Flow sends SMS under your registered DLT template.