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Egypt NTRA Sender & Marketing Rules

Egypt regulates commercial messaging through the National Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (NTRA) and protects personal data through the Personal Data Protection Law No. 151 of 2020; Law No. 175 of 2018 (the anti-cybercrime law) sets the content floor for anything transmitted over Egyptian networks. The operator edge only delivers registered sender identities, the data-protection regime requires consent before electronic marketing, and NTRA conventions shape when marketing may land and how recipients stop it. Scope. Your organization owns the lawful basis and the consent record. Orbit ships tenant-owned controls only — the consent ledger, suppression, keyword aliases, quiet hours, sender-registration tracking, and the send-gate — defaults-open; you configure them for Egypt. This page is documentation, not legal advice.
Enforcement exposure is real on both tracks: Law 151/2020 provides fines and imprisonment terms for processing without a lawful basis, and Law 175/2018 penalizes prohibited content carried on networks. Egyptian carriers also filter unregistered sender traffic at the edge. Have counsel review your consent text and content categories before you send into EG.

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1. Sender IDs and the NTRA edge

Read the live EG row of GET /compliance/country-rules?channel=sms on Country Compliance Requirements before you provision. Egyptian operators deliver alphanumeric sender IDs that are registered for the traffic route; unregistered identities are filtered at the operator edge. Long codes and short codes follow their own current row values.
File the alphanumeric sender through Sender-ID Registration and wait for the EG entry to report approved before sending under it. Where the row reports registration: required without an approved entry, the send-gate holds EG traffic — intended behavior, not a fault.

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2. Law 151/2020 and Law 175/2018

Law 151/2020 requires a lawful basis, typically documented consent, before you process a recipient’s number for electronic marketing — treat EG promotional traffic as opt-in. Record the consent entry with sms scope, the purpose, and the consent-text version on the consent ledger before the first send, and let the tenant-owned unknown-marketing policy refuse marketing sends for contacts with no record — the refuse default is the correct posture for Egypt. Law 175/2018 screens content, not consent: material the law prohibits on Egyptian networks (content against public order or morals, and the categories it names) is a content-layer restriction on every EG send regardless of consent quality. Screen campaigns against Restricted & Prohibited Industries and have counsel review categories with local sensitivity.

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3. Content length on Egyptian routes

Arabic traffic encodes in UCS-2, not GSM-7. A UCS-2 segment carries 70 characters (63 for a multipart continuation), where GSM-7 traffic runs 7 segments of 153 — so an Arabic campaign that reads like a 2-segment message in English splits into more segments and bills accordingly. Keep consent disclosures and marketing copy concise, and check the segment count your composition produces per language before you price the campaign. Sending the same text twice — once per alphabet — is the usual length failure on EG routes; budget the consent text for the UCS-2 budget from the start.

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4. Dual Arabic/English STOP

Regulator-facing practice in EG expects opt-out handling to work in both Arabic and English, and Egyptian recipients will reply in either. The seeded Arabic aliases on the Opt-Out Keyword Alias Table (إلغاء, أوقف, توقف, plus STOP) are the working vocabulary: Confirm the countries scope of the seeded Arabic rows covers EG for your program, or extend them with an EG-targeted alias; the matcher’s case-folding and Unicode normalisation write the same suppression row for توقف, STOP and stop. Set the auto-reply to acknowledge in both languages (You are now unsubscribed. تم إلغاء اشتراكك. is the shape), and route EG revocations at scope all so a contact who stops your SMS is not then emailed by the same program.

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5. Marketing window

Egyptian carriers honor a 21:00–07:00 recipient-local no-send convention for marketing traffic. This is a carrier convention, not an Orbit gate: set tenant quiet hours to cover the window deliberately on Quiet-Hours Configuration, and validate the +20 timezone resolution with Quiet-Hours Preview before you flip EG live. Egypt alternates UTC+2 and UTC+3 under its seasonal daylight-saving schedule, so let the recipient-timezone resolution apply the window rather than a hand-set offset; plan Ramadan and Eid campaigns against a tightened window, the same seasonal posture the GCC pages describe.

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6. Obligations → Orbit surface table

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7. Launch checklist

  1. Distinguish promotional from service traffic; treat EG marketing as opt-in.
  2. Read the live EG row per channel: sender types, registration level, stop requirement.
  3. File the alphanumeric sender through Sender-ID Registration and wait for approved.
  4. Record consent with sms scope and a pinned consent-text version before any send.
  5. Confirm the Arabic + English STOP aliases cover EG and the auto-reply answers in both languages.
  6. Set tenant quiet hours over 21:00–07:00 recipient-local; tighten for Ramadan and Eid.
  7. Budget Arabic copy against UCS-2 segment lengths and test with a small audience first.

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Frequently asked questions

Does Orbit register my sender with the NTRA? No — carrier-facing registration is filed through your aggregator, as in every market. Orbit tracks the EG entry and gates send-time traffic on it. Why both Arabic and English STOP? Egyptian recipients reply in either language and carriers expect both to work. The seeded Arabic aliases carry the vocabulary; the alias table editor sets the two-language acknowledgement. Does the 21:00–07:00 window block my sends automatically? No — it is a carrier-honored convention, not a platform gate. Setting tenant quiet hours to cover it is your deliberate, tenant-owned control.