Venezuela’s National Telecommunications Commission (CONATEL) enforces by regulation a prohibited‑content list for A2P traffic. It includes five major categories: political propaganda, gambling‑related financial content, adult‑tobacco‑alcohol material, phishing‑impersonation messages, and unauthorised marketing. All bulk‑SMS and automated outbound voice calls terminating into Venezuelan networks are subject to these rules. Operators and SMS service providers must actively block non‑compliant traffic at the gateway level.
Category one: political propaganda and electoral‑campaign content. Venezuela maintains strict controls over political communications. Any A2P bulk‑SMS or robot‑dialler outbound voice used for electoral campaigning, party promotion or political mobilisation is forbidden, to prevent telecommunication resources from improper political interference.
Category two: illegal marketing for gambling, virtual‑currencies and foreign‑exchange services. Promotions for gambling platforms, cryptocurrency‑investment solicitations and illegal foreign‑exchange offers are explicitly banned, given their high financial‑fraud risk. CONATEL mandates operators filter relevant keywords and short URLs.
Category three: prohibited advertisements for pornographic/adult content, tobacco and alcohol. Adult material, tobacco‑product promotion and non‑compliant alcohol marketing fall under the ban. Operators shall perform content detection on message text and embedded links to stop harmful content spreading via bulk messaging.
Category four: phishing SMS and voice impersonating operators, banks or government agencies. Fraudulent communications pretending to be official entities to trick users into disclosing OTP codes, passwords or personal data are a key enforcement target. CONATEL requires real‑time blocking of suspicious Sender‑IDs and scam templates; violating providers face immediate channel shutdown.
Category five: blind bulk marketing messages without end‑user consent. Even where content falls outside the above banned categories, large‑scale mass‑messaging without explicit end‑user opt‑in consent constitutes a violation. Service providers must preserve consent evidence for audit purposes.
