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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 of GET /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


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&region=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.