> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.orbit.devotel.io/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Belgium BIPT + GBA Sender Rules

> The Belgium SMS rules expanded from the country-requirements matrix: BIPT sender identification under the Telecom Act, the GBA's GDPR and ePrivacy enforcement through Book XII of the Code of Economic Law, the Art. XII.13 marketing opt-in with its consent-record fields, sender-ID acceptance across Proximus, Telenet, and Orange BE, the French, Dutch, and German STOP families for a trilingual market, the Ne m'appelez pas / Bel-me-niet register for voice, and quiet hours — mapped to the Orbit surfaces you already own.

# Belgium BIPT + GBA Sender Rules

Belgium (`BE`) is the bilingual Benelux market whose rules split
across two regulators instead of one. The telecom side sits with the
BIPT (Belgian Institute for Postal Services and
Telecommunications), which applies the sender-identification
provisions of the Telecom Act of 13 June 2005 to traffic terminating
on Belgian networks. The data-protection and ePrivacy side sits with
the GBA (Gegevensbeschermingsautoriteit, Autorité de protection des
données), which enforces the GDPR alongside Article XII of the Code
of Economic Law (CEL/WER) — including the Art. XII.13 opt-in regime
for electronic marketing communications. Over both, the same Code
maintains the Ne m'appelez pas / Bel-me-niet do-not-call register
that governs voice outreach. This page expands the BE row of the
[country-requirements matrix](/compliance/country-requirements) so
you can close the Belgian items deliberately instead of re-reading
one JSON blob per launch.

Belgium is a **tenant-owned burden**. Orbit never mandates your
posture — it keeps the
[country-rules reference](/compliance/country-requirements) that
feeds the send-time gates, and it gives you the consent ledger,
sender-registration, quiet-hours, and opt-out surfaces below. The
legal posture is yours. The Dutch/French split makes two decisions
market-typical here: which language your opt-out instruction is
written in, and which STOP vocabulary you confirm before launch.
Both are configuration choices this page walks through.

<Note>
  This page is documentation, not legal advice. The GBA enforces the
  GDPR and the Code of Economic Law's ePrivacy provisions against
  the sender, with administrative fines up to the GDPR ceilings, and
  Belgian operators police sender identification at the carrier
  edge. Have counsel review your consent capture and your French
  and Dutch message wording; Orbit supplies the surfaces.
</Note>

***

## The two regulators — BIPT for telecom, GBA for data protection

**BIPT (telecom).** The BIPT is Belgium's federal regulator for
postal services and electronic communications, and the Telecom Act
of 13 June 2005 is the statute it applies. For A2P SMS the provision
that touches you is sender identification: traffic into Belgian
networks must carry an identifiable originator, and the Belgian
operators apply that expectation at their own edges. When a sender
dispute or a deliverability question has a telecom flavour, it lands
here.

**GBA (data protection).** The GBA — Gegevensbeschermingsautoriteit
in Dutch, Autorité de protection des données in French — is
Belgium's data-protection authority. It enforces the GDPR alongside
Book XII of the Code of Economic Law, whose Art. XII.13 gates
electronic marketing communications behind prior consent. The
consent record behind every BE marketing send has to survive GBA
examination: a lawful basis, a timestamp, and a source the recipient
would recognise. When a complaint arrives, it is the GBA that reads
your ledger.

The split is why Belgium needs two ledgers kept straight: the sender
behaviour answers to the BIPT side and the operators, the consent
and suppression evidence answers to the GBA side.

***

## The live `country-rules` lookup for BE

Read the BE row of `GET /api/v1/compliance/country-rules?channel=sms`
(see
[Country Compliance Requirements](/compliance/country-requirements)).
The live row is the send-time truth; this page documents the posture
behind it.

```bash theme={null}
curl "https://api.orbit.devotel.io/api/v1/compliance/country-rules?channel=sms&region=EU" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $ORBIT_API_KEY"
```

Read `sender_types`, `registration`, `content_restrictions`, and
`stop_requirement` from the BE row before every launch. The BE row
currently accepts alphanumeric sender IDs with `registration`
level `none` — no statutory registry holds your traffic at an Orbit
gate — and carries the operator caveat this page expands: Belgian
operators may relabel or override unregistered sender IDs, so the
absence of a platform gate is not the absence of a carrier
expectation. A registry refresh can raise a row's `registration`
level (never lower it), so the row you read today is the one the
gate enforces tomorrow.

| Rule | BE value | What it means for you |
| - | - | - |
| Sender types | `alphanumeric`, `long_code` | Both accepted. Alphanumeric sender IDs into +32 travel under operator-level acceptance: Proximus, Telenet, and Orange BE each police unidentified senders at their own edge. |
| Registration | `none` on the live row; operator caveat | The send-time gate holds BE only as far as the live `registration` level says, and Orbit defaults stay open. The operator caveat still argues for filing the sender before launch — treat the filing as a launch item, not a gate. File through [Sender-ID Registration](/compliance/sender-id-registration). |
| Marketing consent | Prior opt-in required (CEL Art. XII.13 + GDPR) | Art. XII.13 gates electronic marketing communications behind prior consent; the GBA applies the same reading to the processing behind the send. Consent must exist before dispatch — record it in the consent ledger with `sms` scope. |
| Opt-out keyword | French and Dutch vocabulary mandatory, German for DE-language sends | Every BE marketing message must accept the opt-out families of the languages you send in; the seeded alias table maps the FR, NL, and DE families to your suppression ledger. See [Opt-Out Keyword Alias Table](/compliance/opt-out-keyword-alias-table). |
| Voice outreach | Ne m'appelez pas / Bel-me-niet register | Scrub Belgian voice audiences against the national do-not-call register before dialing; Orbit's DNC scrub carries the list you import. See [DNC Scrubbing](/compliance/dnc-scrub). |
| Send window | No statutory SMS window; market convention | Belgium has no statutory no-send window for marketing SMS; the market convention mirrors the neighbouring strict regimes. Honour it with tenant quiet hours over Europe/Brussels — off by default. |

***

## Sender-ID acceptance across Proximus, Telenet, and Orange BE

Belgium has no statutory sender-ID register of the Indian DLT or
Australian ACMA kind. What Belgium has is three operator edges —
Proximus, Telenet, and Orange BE — that each expect an alphanumeric
sender ID into +32 to resolve to an originator they can identify,
and that may relabel or override a sender they cannot. That is the
operator caveat the live row carries: the filtering you hit without
the groundwork is deliverability, not an Orbit gate.

The groundwork that carries the convention is the brand-to-sender
pairing your operator or aggregator files on your behalf, naming the
brand behind the alphanumeric ID. The tenant-owned control that
carries it in Orbit is the
[Sender-ID Registration](/compliance/sender-id-registration)
submit-and-track flow — file the BE sender there with the brand
authorisation attached, and treat the approval state as a launch
blocker for BE marketing traffic even while the live row's
`registration` level stays `none`. Orbit records the filing and the
approval; the operator relationship itself sits with you and your
provider.

***

## Marketing opt-in under Code of Economic Law Art. XII.13

CEL Art. XII.13 is Belgium's opt-in regime for electronic marketing
communications: consent before the send, never after, and the
narrow existing-customer exception reads the way other ePrivacy
implementations read it — it covers similar products or services of
the same undertaking, not a new marketing relationship. The GBA
reads silence, bundled consent, and pre-ticked boxes the way its
European peers read them — they do not establish consent. For
BE-bound marketing SMS the statute stack runs:

* **GDPR** — lawful basis and provable consent for the processing
  behind the send. Record it the way the
  [GDPR Posture Guide](/compliance/gdpr-posture-guide) describes.
* **CEL Art. XII.13** — Belgium's own ePrivacy-layer addition:
  marketing by electronic communications is lawful only with the
  recipient's prior consent.
* **Withdrawal symmetry** — an opt-out must be as easy as the opt-in
  and must stop the traffic. A French or Dutch opt-out reply fires
  the alias rule and writes a suppression entry scoped to `all`, so
  `ARRÊT` knocks the recipient off SMS, WhatsApp, and RCS in one
  event.

The consent record has to *exist* before the first marketing send and
be *provable* on complaint. Give every record the fields the GBA
will ask for:

* the timestamp the recipient opted in (the consent-granted-at
  value),
* the channel scope (`sms` for BE marketing SMS),
* the language the recipient consented in — this is the field that
  makes the section below a lookup instead of a guess,
* the source text the recipient saw at capture, in that same
  language,
* the proof pointer you export when counsel asks.

Record it in [Consent Management](/compliance/consent-management)
before the first dispatch, and export it with timestamps from
[Archival Export](/compliance/archival-export) when the GBA or
counsel asks.

***

## Multi-lingual STOP coverage

Belgium's three official languages make the opt-out vocabulary a
decision, not a default. The seeded alias table already ships the
families you need:

| Language | Seeded opt-out family |
| - | - |
| French | `ARRÊT`, `ARRET`, `ANNULER`, `STOP`, `FIN` |
| Dutch | `STOP`, `STOPPEN`, `UITSCHRIJVEN`, `OPZEGGEN` |
| German | `STOPP`, `ABBESTELLEN`, `ABMELDEN`, `ENDE` |

Matching happens on the inbound reply, so the two strategies
differ only in what your outbound copy says:

* **Pick per-recipient language (recommended).** Where the consent
  record carries the language, send the opt-out instruction in that
  language — "Répondez STOP pour vous désinscrire" for FR
  recipients, "Antwoord STOP om je uit te schrijven" for NL
  recipients — and add `STOPP` coverage for the German-speaking
  East Cantons if you send there. The seeded families already match
  whatever the recipient types back.
* **Blast all three.** Where the language is unknown, keep all
  three seeded families live on the tenant and write the opt-out
  line trilingually. Coarser copy, zero language guesswork. The
  alias table's custom additions are additive-only, so leaving the
  three families enabled never weakens the English `STOP` family —
  see
  [Opt-Out Keyword Alias Table](/compliance/opt-out-keyword-alias-table)
  for the seeded set, the scope each alias writes, and how
  additions behave.

Whichever strategy you pick, confirm each family writes the
suppression entry scoped to `all`, exactly like the English `STOP`
family, and scrub against it — see
[Opt-Out Suppression](/compliance/opt-out-suppression). The
[Netherlands page](/compliance/netherlands-acm-rules) covers the NL
half of the Dutch family's home market, and the
[France page](/compliance/fr-marketing-sms-rules) the FR half;
Belgium is where both run in one tenant.

***

## The Belgian do-not-call register for voice

The SMS sections above do not cover voice. For calls, the Code of
Economic Law maintains the Ne m'appelez pas / Bel-me-niet
do-not-call register — one list, two names, one per language
community — and a consumer registered on it may not be called for
direct marketing. This is the Belgian counterpart of the registers
[the DNC scrub page](/compliance/dnc-scrub) walks through for other
markets: Orbit does not hold the Belgian list for you, and nothing
on the platform scrubs it on your behalf by default. Import the
register's covered numbers into your suppression posture, scrub
every BE voice audience against it before each campaign, and keep
the scrub evidence exportable — the tenant owns the list currency
and the audit trail.

***

## Quiet hours

Belgium has no statutory no-send window for marketing SMS the way
France's 20:00–08:00 rule is statutory. What Belgium has is a market
convention that mirrors the neighbouring strict regimes — the
French statutory window and the German 21:00–09:00 guidance — and a
GBA complaint pattern that prices evening and early-morning
marketing traffic accordingly. The tenant-owned control is the same
deliberate opt-in as every other strict market:

| Surface | Behaviour for BE |
| - | - |
| Tenant quiet hours (deliberate) | [Quiet-Hours Configuration](/guides/quiet-hours-configuration) — opt-in tenant control, default **OFF / fail-open**; configure a Europe/Brussels recipient-local window mirroring the neighbouring 21:00–09:00 convention if you want the platform to hold BE marketing sends. Nothing in Orbit defaults this on. |
| Consent-default policy | Set the org-level consent-default policy so BE marketing traffic requires a consent record, not a consent assumption — see [Consent Default Policy](/compliance/consent-default-policy). |
| Suppression scrub | Scrub every BE audience against the [suppression ledger](/compliance/opt-out-suppression) before each launch; an objector receives nothing further, in any language. |

Where BE differs from FR: France's window is statutory and surfaces
in the country-rules `content_restrictions`; Belgium's is
convention plus a complaint pattern. Both end at the same
configuration — you set tenant quiet hours deliberately — but
nothing BE-specific appears in the rules row to remind you, so this
page does.

***

## Where each BE obligation maps in Orbit

| BE obligation | Orbit surface |
| - | - |
| Consent before marketing send (CEL Art. XII.13 + GDPR) | [Consent Management](/compliance/consent-management) — a consent record with `sms` scope, language, and timestamp before dispatch; posture in the [GDPR Posture Guide](/compliance/gdpr-posture-guide) |
| BIPT-side sender identification, operator caveat | [Sender-ID Registration](/compliance/sender-id-registration) submit-and-track flow; the [send-time gate](/compliance/send-gates) holds only as far as the live `registration` level says, so treat the filing as a launch blocker |
| French + Dutch (+ German) opt-out vocabulary | [Opt-Out Keyword Alias Table](/compliance/opt-out-keyword-alias-table) — the FR, NL, and DE families map to the suppression ledger, scoped to `all` |
| Withdrawal symmetry, suppression evidence | [Opt-Out Suppression](/compliance/opt-out-suppression) — the tenant-owned ledger, scrubbed before every BE launch |
| Ne m'appelez pas / Bel-me-niet voice scrub | [DNC Scrubbing](/compliance/dnc-scrub) — import the register, scrub BE voice audiences, keep the evidence |
| Provable consent on GBA complaint | [Archival Export](/compliance/archival-export) — export the ledger with the consent-granted-at timestamp |
| Send-window discipline | [Quiet-Hours Configuration](/guides/quiet-hours-configuration) — deliberate tenant opt-in over Europe/Brussels recipient time |

***

## BE launch checklist

Narrowed from the generic launch checklist in
[Country Compliance Requirements](/compliance/country-requirements)
to the BE row:

<Steps>
  <Step title="Look up the BE row">
    Call `GET /api/v1/compliance/country-rules?channel=sms&region=EU`
    and read the BE row's `sender_types`, `registration`,
    `content_restrictions`, and `stop_requirement`.
  </Step>

  <Step title="File the alphanumeric sender">
    Submit the BE sender with the brand authorisation through
    [Sender-ID Registration](/compliance/sender-id-registration);
    Proximus, Telenet, and Orange BE each relabel senders they
    cannot identify.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Capture marketing opt-in first">
    Record a consent entry with `sms` scope — timestamp, language,
    source text, proof pointer — before any BE marketing send; CEL
    Art. XII.13 is opt-in, not opt-out. See
    [Consent Management](/compliance/consent-management) and the
    [GDPR Posture Guide](/compliance/gdpr-posture-guide).
  </Step>

  <Step title="Wire the trilingual STOP families">
    Confirm the FR (`ARRÊT`), NL (`STOPPEN`, `UITSCHRIJVEN`), and DE
    (`STOPP`) families are mapped in the alias table and write the
    suppression entry scoped to `all`; choose per-recipient
    language or the trilingual blast. See
    [Opt-Out Keyword Alias Table](/compliance/opt-out-keyword-alias-table).
  </Step>

  <Step title="Scrub the suppression ledger and the DNC register">
    Scrub the BE audience against the
    [suppression ledger](/compliance/opt-out-suppression) before
    each launch, and for voice campaigns against the imported
    Ne m'appelez pas / Bel-me-niet register via
    [DNC Scrubbing](/compliance/dnc-scrub).
  </Step>

  <Step title="Set tenant quiet hours deliberately">
    If you run BE marketing traffic, turn on tenant quiet hours
    over Europe/Brussels recipient time, mirroring the neighbouring
    21:00–09:00 convention — Orbit defaults this off. See
    [Quiet-Hours Configuration](/guides/quiet-hours-configuration).
  </Step>

  <Step title="Launch">
    With BE enabled on the tenant, the sender filed, consent
    captured, keywords wired, the ledgers scrubbed, and quiet hours
    set, start sending.
  </Step>
</Steps>

***

## Related references

* [Country Compliance Requirements](/compliance/country-requirements) —
  the full matrix this page expands one row of.
* [Regional Posture Hub](/compliance/country-rules-directory) — the
  index of every per-country page, including this one.
* [GDPR Posture Guide](/compliance/gdpr-posture-guide) — the EU-side
  consent posture behind Belgium's opt-in rule set.
* [Netherlands ACM Rules](/compliance/netherlands-acm-rules) — the
  Benelux sibling whose Dutch STOP family Belgium shares.
* [France Marketing SMS Rules](/compliance/fr-marketing-sms-rules) —
  the sibling whose French STOP family and window convention
  Belgium partly shares.
* [Opt-Out Keyword Alias Table](/compliance/opt-out-keyword-alias-table) —
  the FR, NL, and DE families and their scope.
* [Opt-Out Suppression](/compliance/opt-out-suppression) — the
  tenant-owned suppression ledger the withdrawal symmetry lands in.
* [DNC Scrubbing](/compliance/dnc-scrub) — the surface that carries
  the imported Ne m'appelez pas / Bel-me-niet register for voice.
* [Consent Management](/compliance/consent-management) — where the
  BE marketing opt-in record lives.
* [Quiet-Hours Configuration](/guides/quiet-hours-configuration) —
  the tenant-owned opt-in control you use to set the BE send
  window.
* [Send Gates](/compliance/send-gates) — the gates that enforce the
  BE `registration` level at send time.


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