There is no argument that unsolicited messages have become a menace and a cause of a serious headache to GSM subscribers in Nigeria. The Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC) has received tonnes of complaints of embarrassing unsolicited SMS, defrauding with unsolicited SMS, and Automated Calls besides complaints of their share volume.
In line with the above, NCC issued a directive to the telecommunications service providers in the country that starting from July 1, 2016, they must activate the ‘Do Not Disturb’ (DND) facility which gives subscribers the freedom to choose what messages to receive from the various networks or face sanctions.
What this means is that phone numbers on DND will no longer receive any text messages from third-party providers. This was done to prevent the incidences of unsolicited and scam messages in a bid to protect the SMS users.
However good and important this directive has proven to be, it has also adversely affected a lot of business. Especially businesses who depend on SMS marketing as a form of driving sales and communicating with their customers.
The Effect of DND on SMS Delivery
DND has a direct negative impact on the delivery of SMS. This is because when a phone number becomes activated on the DND service, they generally do not receive third-party messages. And that has greatly affected businesses for a lot of people who use this channel to communicate their marketing messages.
One reason why this is quite problematic for SMS users is that recently a lot of people are getting activated on DND without their consent or request. So many SMS users have complained about not receiving SMSs and they did not subscribe to DND. But when the network operators return delivery reports for SMS attempted to be sent to them, it shows that they are active on the DND service. This has been an ongoing challenge with delivering SMS for many years.
Thankfully, here at SmartSMSSolutions, we currently have a number of delivery options for phone numbers on DND. You can use the SIM Hosting service, which does that perfectly. There is also the option of delivering SMS to those numbers using the international route. All these are the solutions we have so far provided for assured delivery to phone numbers on DND.
If you need more information on how to deliver SMS to phone numbers active on DND, you can mail us at