Alphanumeric SMS Sender ID format

The ACMA has restrictions and criteria for all SMS sender IDs before they can be registered.

A sender ID must be formatted to:

only consist of letters, numbers and symbols – these should correspond to decimal codes 32–126 from the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) standard
be at least 2 and no more than 11 characters long
not consist only of numbers
not contain a space or underscore at the beginning or end of the sender ID
not contain the word ‘Unverified’
not contain a word or words that are offensive, deceptive or misleading, using the commonly understood definitions of those terms
not solely consist of a restricted word or words.

Sender IDs are not case sensitive (for example, ‘ABC’ is considered the same as ‘abc’).

A sender ID can be registered and used by multiple organisations if each organisation can prove it has a valid use case.

Restricted words set by ACMA include:

The ACMA will not accept applications to register sender IDs that consist of only one or more restricted words on the following list:

See current ACMA restricted terms and guides.

As part of the ACMA SMS Sender ID register, from July 1st 2026, all alphanumeric SMS sender IDs must be registered and approved to use this ID for any outbound SMS messages.