France Marketing SMS Rules
France (FR) is the market operators hit repeatedly in the
country-requirements matrix, and its
marketing-SMS posture is stricter than most of Europe’s: mandatory
marketing opt-in, statutory no-send windows, and a French-language
opt-out keyword. This page expands the FR row so you can close the four
items deliberately instead of re-reading one JSON blob per launch.
France is a tenant-owned burden. Orbit never mandates your posture —
it keeps the country-rules reference
that feeds the send-time gates, and it gives you the consent ledger,
quiet-hours, and opt-out surfaces below. The legal posture is yours.
This page is documentation, not legal advice. The French marketing-SMS
rules derive from GDPR-style consent and French commercial-communication
rules enforced against the sender, not the platform. Have counsel review
your consent capture and STOP handling; Orbit supplies the surfaces.
The France-specific rules
Read the FR row ofGET /compliance/country-rules?channel=sms (see
Country Compliance Requirements).
Consolidated:
The
registration: recommended level is the easy one to misread: FR
does not gate sends on it, but unregistered alphanumeric traffic is
more likely to be filtered or relabelled by the carriers. Treat it as
effectively required for anything beyond a test send.
No-send windows vs tenant quiet hours
Orbit’s tenant quiet-hours feature (guides/quiet-hours-configuration)
and the FR statutory no-send windows are different things:
If you market into FR, configure tenant quiet hours that cover the FR
window (20:00–08:00 Europe/Paris recipient time) plus Sundays and French
public holidays, so the opt-in control enforces what the convention asks
for. That is a deliberate opt-in — default tenant quiet hours on, FR
window set — not a flip Orbit makes for you.
Under GDPR, consent records need to exist before the first marketing
send; see the GDPR Posture Guide for
the consent-ledger and data-residency surfaces.
Where each FR obligation maps in Orbit
Call recording & wiretap
France is a two-party-consent recording jurisdiction: the prevailing rule under Art. 226-1 of the French Penal Code (the privacy-of-communications provision) and its ePrivacy layer is that every party to a call must consent before it is recorded, and unauthorised recording is treated as a criminal offence. This is the prevailing-rule summary for the market, not legal advice.The seeded
two_party_explicit default is a platform convenience,
not a legal determination — your per-number posture can only
stricten it, never relax it
(Overrides only stricten).FR launch checklist
Narrowed from the generic launch checklist in Country Compliance Requirements to the FR row:1
Look up the FR row
Call
GET /compliance/country-rules?channel=sms®ion=EU and read
the FR row’s sender_types, registration, content_restrictions,
and stop_requirement.2
Pick a sender type
Alphanumeric Sender ID (dynamic, no pre-registration) or a long code —
both are accepted in FR.
3
Register the Sender ID
recommended, not required — submit anyway for stable delivery.
See Sender-ID Registration.4
Capture marketing opt-in first
Record a consent entry with
sms scope before any FR marketing send;
FR is opt-in, not opt-out. See
Consent Management.5
Cover the no-send windows deliberately
If you run FR marketing traffic, turn on tenant quiet hours covering
20:00–08:00 Europe/Paris plus Sundays and French public holidays —
Orbit defaults this off. See
Quiet-Hours Configuration.
6
Wire STOP au 36111
Confirm STOP in French is mapped into the alias table and writes the
suppression entry. See
Opt-Out Keyword Alias Table.
7
Launch
With FR enabled on the tenant, the sender registered, consent
captured, quiet hours set, and STOP handled, start sending.
Number purchase documents
France is a regulated number-purchase market: the compliance wizard prompts aphone_number_purchase profile before an FR number
activates. Required roles are business_doc (the Kbis registry
extract), address_proof (justificatif de domicile), and id_proof.
The wizard also prompts the shared regulated-purchase data fields
(business identity, website, and the use-case description with
sub-allocation disclosure). The profile carries the packet (example
roles and data):
Related references
- Country Compliance Requirements — the full matrix this page expands one row of.
- GDPR Posture Guide — the EU-side consent and data-residency posture behind FR’s opt-in rule.
- US CAN-SPAM — the adjacent opt-out model, for comparison against FR’s opt-in posture.
- Sender-ID Registration — the
submit-and-track flow for the FR
recommendedregistration. - Opt-Out Keyword Alias Table — STOP and its French path to the suppression ledger.
- Quiet-Hours Configuration — the tenant-owned opt-in control you use to honor the FR no-send windows.
- Consent Management — where the FR marketing opt-in record lives.
- Send Gates — the gates that enforce the FR
registrationlevel at send time.