Jordan Outbound Calling Compliance: TRC (2026)

Quick answer

Outbound contact in Jordan is regulated by the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRC) under the Telecommunications Law No. 13 of 1995 and the Instructions Regulating the Sending of Bulk Messages of 28 October 2024, with personal data governed by the Personal Data Protection Law No. 24 of 2023 and supervised by the Ministry of Digital Economy and Entrepreneurship. The data model is prior, explicit consent that is documented and limited as to duration and purpose, no national Do Not Call register was found in published sources and that should be confirmed with the TRC, and opt-outs run through free operator mechanisms. Advertising messages are prohibited between 21:00 and 07:00 every day of the week, and on feasts, religious and official holidays and national occasions, without the TRC's prior approval.

Jordan is a heavily used BPO base where the telecom rulebook and the data-protection rulebook pull in different directions. The TRC's instruments regulate the channel and run on opt-out mechanics; the Personal Data Protection Law regulates the list and runs on opt-in. A campaign has to satisfy both.

At a Glance

Item	Position in Jordan
Regulator	Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRC), هيئة تنظيم قطاع الاتصالات. Data is supervised by the Ministry of Digital Economy and Entrepreneurship
Law and date	Instructions Regulating the Sending of Bulk Messages, TRC Board Decision No. (18-10/2024) of 28 October 2024, issued under the Telecommunications Law No. 13 of 1995 and its amendments
Licence needed	Yes for bulk messaging: a general telecommunications licence from the TRC plus TRC-pre-approved subscription contracts. A separate licence for outbound voice telemarketing could not be confirmed
Calling hours	Advertising messages prohibited 21:00 to 07:00 every day of the week, and on feasts, religious and official holidays and national occasions, without the TRC's prior approval. Jordan is UTC+3 all year (secondary source). No voice hours rule was confirmed
Consent model	Prior consent under PDPL Article 4(a), explicit, documented in writing or electronically, and specified as to duration and purpose. Article 14(a)(3) bars transfers for marketing without consent. There is no legitimate-interests route
Do Not Call list	No national register was found. Operators must provide free mechanisms letting a beneficiary stop advertising messages wholly or partially, and notify the change by SMS
Caller ID rule	Bulk messages carry a category code before the sender name: ADV for advertising, SRV for service, ALR and AWR for government use. Code, sender name and content must be consistent. No voice CLI rule was confirmed
Recording rule	Article 71 of the Telecommunications Law punishes recording without legal basis with one month to one year, a fine of JD 100 to JD 300, or both. PDPL Article 9 requires prior written or electronic notice. No announcement rule was confirmed
Data protection law	Personal Data Protection Law No. 24 of 2023, in force with a conformity period of not more than one year from entry into force under Article 23
Penalties	PDPL administrative fine up to JOD 500 per day a violation continues, capped at 3% of the preceding year's total revenues, plus suspension or revocation. PDPL criminal fine JOD 1,000 to JOD 10,000, doubled on repetition
Published TRC fine tariff	Not published. The instruments refer breaches to the Law and to bilateral licence agreements

Who Regulates Outbound Calling in Jordan

The TRC regulates telecommunications and information technology services under the Telecommunications Law No. 13 of 1995 as amended. Article 6(d) charges it with protecting beneficiaries' interests, and Article 12(a)(2) lets the Board issue instructions and decisions, the legal basis for every TRC instrument here. Nuisance calls are an express competence under Article 57.

Personal data sits with the Ministry of Digital Economy and Entrepreneurship, whose Personal Data Protection Directorate is the supervisory unit under the PDPL. A Personal Data Protection Council chaired by the Minister sits above it and is operational, having adopted the standard forms for data-subject requests.

Bulk messaging is licensed, and the licensing is real. Article 3 of the 2024 Instructions states that no bulk-message sending or transit service may be provided until the licences and approvals required from the TRC have been obtained. Article 5(1) requires the source to hold a general telecommunications licence, Article 5(2) requires TRC-pre-approved subscription contracts, and Article 7(7) requires all bulk-message servers to be located inside Jordan.

What could not be confirmed is a licence specific to outbound voice telemarketing or call-centre operation, separate from general telecommunications licensing. Ask the TRC directly rather than assuming either way.

Consent and Opt-Out

The PDPL default is prior consent. Article 4(a) prohibits processing without the prior consent of the person concerned. Under Article 5(a) that consent must be explicit and documented in writing or electronically, specified as to duration and purpose, and requested in clear, simple, non-misleading language. Article 5(b) voids consent obtained through incorrect information or deceptive practices, and voids it where the nature, type or aims of the processing changed without fresh consent.

There is no fixed maximum validity; the law forces you to state a term instead. Article 5(a)(2) requires the duration to be specified, and Article 9(c) requires advance notice of the processing period, which may not be extended except with the person's consent. A consent record in Jordan needs an expiry date on it.

Withdrawal is a listed right under Article 4(b)(2). Article 8(f) obliges the controller to enable objection, withdrawal, access and updating securely, Article 10(a)(2) requires erasure on withdrawal, and Article 4(c) bars any financial or contractual consequence from exercising those rights.

One provision is aimed squarely at list trading. Article 14(a) bars transferring or exchanging data with any other person except with the person's consent, and its third condition is that the purpose must not be marketing products or services unless the person consented to that specifically. Article 6(a)'s ten exemptions from prior consent are a closed list, and marketing is not among them.

Do-Not-Call

No national Do Not Call register was found. The TRC file index, the 2011, 2020-draft and 2024 Bulk Messages Instructions, the Nuisance Complaints Instructions, the retention instructions and the Ministry's data-protection pages were all searched, and none establishes a register or a scrubbing duty. That is a "not found" rather than a proven absence.

What exists instead is an operator-level opt-out. Article 4(4) requires the Operator to provide free options letting the beneficiary directly stop receiving advertising messages wholly or partially, or re-enable them, and Article 4(5) requires notification of the stop or reactivation by SMS. The 2011 predecessor added a cross-network duty not to pass advertising messages to unwilling beneficiaries even where the source sits on another company's network.

Alongside that sits a nuisance-complaints regime with hard thresholds. Under Board Decision No. (14-19/2011) of 27 December 2011, a complaint counts as nuisance where there are at minimum two received calls each not exceeding 60 seconds, or two messages, or four missed calls in one day, or ten over seven days. Escalation runs from warning to partial disconnection for one week, full disconnection for 30 days, termination of the subscription, and a one-year bar on a new subscription.

Calling Hours and Days

Article 7(2) of the 2024 Instructions prohibits both the Operator and the bulk-message source, without the TRC's prior approval, from sending or passing advertising messages during feasts, religious and official holidays and national occasions, and during the period from 21:00 to 07:00 throughout all days of the week. The same window ran under the 2011 Instructions, which were more explicit about applying it: the time of receipt, not of sending, must fall inside the permitted window. Build the scheduler around delivery time.

The weekend is Friday and Saturday, with the working week Sunday to Thursday, but the Instructions do not separately carve out the weekend. What they carve out is declared feasts, religious and official holidays and national occasions, which the Cabinet declares, so your calendar needs a live source rather than a fixed list.

Two limits are worth stating plainly. The curfew is written for advertising messages inside instruments whose scope is bulk messaging, and no calling-hours window for outbound voice calls could be confirmed, so treat it as the regulator's expressed standard of acceptable contact hours rather than a voice rule. And the adopted 2024 text contains no numeric daily frequency cap; a 2020 consultation draft would have capped advertising messages at five per beneficiary per day, but that draft was never the operative text.

On the clock itself, per the IANA Time Zone Database, Jordan has been a fixed UTC+3 zone with no daylight saving since 28 October 2022. That is a secondary source, so treat it as configuration input rather than a regulator citation.

Caller ID and Number Presentation

Jordan's identification regime is built into the message rather than the signalling, and it is unusually strict.

Article 2 defines the sender name as the unique identifying name placed immediately after the category code in the message text, and defines four codes. ADV marks advertising and promotional content. SRV marks service messages relating to a contracted service, sent with the beneficiary's consent or at their request. ALR marks warning messages and AWR awareness messages, and both may be sent only by or for competent government entities.

Article 4(1) requires the Operator to pass bulk messages only where the category code, the sender name and the content are consistent, and Article 5(3) puts the identical duty on the source. Mislabelling an advertising message as SRV is a breach by both parties.

On numbering, the National Numbering Plan states that numbers are a national resource owned and administered by the TRC, that no licensee owns any number allocated to it or its customers, and that licensees shall not use any numbers other than those allocated by the TRC. A rule on voice CLI presentation, withheld CLI or spoofing could not be confirmed, nor could a dedicated numbering range for call centres.

Call Recording and Notices

Recording without a legal basis is a crime. Telecommunications Law Article 71 punishes anyone who discloses the content of a communication or telephone message learned by virtue of their post, or records it without any legal basis, with imprisonment of one month to one year, a fine of JD 100 to JD 300, or both. Article 56 adds that telephone calls and private telecommunications are confidential matters which may not be violated under legal liability.

A recording is personal data, since the PDPL covers data relating to an identifiable person whatever its source or form. Article 9 therefore requires the controller, before starting processing, to inform the person in writing or electronically of the data and start date, the purpose, the processing period, any processor taking part, the security controls, and information about profiling. No rule prescribing a recording announcement, a beep tone or a retention period for a marketer's recordings could be confirmed; the operative requirement is the Article 4(a) consent plus the Article 9 prior notice.

Messaging Rules for SMS and WhatsApp

A compliant Jordanian bulk-SMS operation has several moving parts beyond consent. The source needs a general telecommunications licence and TRC-pre-approved subscription contracts, servers inside Jordan, the right category code on every message with a consistent sender name and content, and advertising traffic kept outside 21:00 to 07:00 and off declared holidays. The Operator must obtain TRC approval for any contract carrying bulk messages from outside the Kingdom.

Reporting is written into the 2024 Instructions. Operators and bulk-message sources report complaint counts and technical and statistical reports to the TRC annually with an updated sender list, run continuous risk and gap assessment, and are subject to the TRC's own technical verification procedures. The Instructions do not address WhatsApp or other over-the-top messaging; the PDPL duties on prior consent, prior notice, stated duration and withdrawal apply to any channel, so treat those as the floor and confirm the channel position with the TRC.

Data Protection and Retention

The PDPL entered into force six months after publication under Article 1, and Article 23 gave entities already handling data not more than one year from that date to bring themselves into conformity. The Ministry, announcing the Cabinet's approval of the 2025 Data Subject Rights Regulation, described the law as having entered into force in March. The Official Gazette issue number and exact publication date could not be confirmed from the government-published extract.

Article 7 sets the processing principles: a lawful, specific and clear purpose, consistency with the purposes of collection, lawful means, correct and updated data, no identification once the purpose is exhausted, and no harm to the person. Cross-border transfer is prohibited under Article 15(a) where the recipient's level of protection is lower than the PDPL's, subject to six exceptions including the person's consent to the transfer after being informed that adequate protection is not available. Article 15(b) requires the controller to verify the recipient's level of protection before starting the transfer. If you transfer databases outside Jordan, Article 11(a) makes appointing a data protection officer mandatory, and Article 14(b) requires records of what was transferred, to whom, for what purpose, with documentation of the consents.

Retention runs on purpose. Article 6(b) prohibits retaining processed data after the purpose ends unless legislation provides otherwise. On the telecom side, the Communications Records Retention Instructions of 21 November 2019 require a service provider to keep communications records for not less than one year, including date, time, duration, content where it exists, and the list of beneficiaries messages were sent to; the per-record schedule sits in an annex expressly not published to the public. Breach notification is the tightest deadline in the law: affected data subjects within 24 hours of discovering a breach liable to cause serious harm, and the Unit within 72 hours.

Penalties and Enforcement

Under the PDPL, enforcement starts administratively. Article 21(a) has the Unit warn the violator to stop and remove the causes and effects within a set period. If that passes, the Council may warn that the licence will be suspended, suspend it, revoke it, or impose a fine of up to JOD 500 for each day the violation continues, capped at 3% of the violator's total annual revenues for the preceding financial year. The Unit may publish proven violations at the violator's expense, and civil claims are preserved.

Criminally, Article 22(a) sets a fine of JOD 1,000 to JOD 10,000 for violating the law or its instruments, doubled on repetition, with no imprisonment. Article 22(b) lets the court order destruction of the data or cancellation of the database.

Under the Telecommunications Law, Article 75(a) punishes originating or forwarding threatening or abusive messages, messages contrary to public morals, or false information intended to spread panic, with one month to one year, a fine of JD 300 to JD 2,000, or both. Article 77 covers copying or revealing a message or tampering with subscriber information including unpublished numbers, with up to six months or a fine up to JD 1,000. Article 78(a) punishes operating a public telecommunications network contrary to the Law with not less than three months, a fine of JD 5,000 to JD 25,000, or both. Article 58(a) lets service be withheld where a beneficiary uses it in a way that violates effective legislation, which is the hook the nuisance regime uses.

Sector-instrument penalties are by reference rather than by tariff. Article 7(6) of the 2024 Instructions applies the penalties in the Law and in the licence agreement, and the TRC may revoke the approval. Because licence agreements are bilateral and unpublished, no schedule of TRC fine amounts could be confirmed.

What Changed in 2025 and 2026

The bulk-messaging rulebook was replaced on 28 October 2024 and that text is current. It repealed Instructions No. (7-6/2021) of 31 May 2021 and gave holders of pre-existing approvals three months to bring themselves into line.

Substantively new relative to 2011: licensing for bulk-message sources, TRC pre-approval of subscription contracts, the government-only ALR and AWR classes, the consistency duty, the servers-in-Jordan requirement, an express duty to comply with data-protection legislation, annual reporting, continuous risk and gap assessment, and the TRC's own technical verification procedures.

On the data side, one implementing regulation has been adopted and one is pending. The Council of Ministers approved the Regulation on Organising the Rights of the Data Subject of 2025, covering the procedures for obtaining prior consent for each processing purpose, withdrawing it, and handling complaints. A draft Regulation on the Unit's mechanisms and procedures was approved in principle and sent onward, and had not been issued as at the last capture. The Directorate is meanwhile building a national register of controllers, processors and data protection officers.

One negative finding is worth recording. The Electronic Transactions Law No. 15 of 2015 does not regulate unsolicited commercial communications: its full text was searched and contains no anti-spam, opt-in or electronic direct-marketing provision. Nothing can be asserted about Consumer Protection Law No. 7 of 2017, whose text could not be retrieved.

How the Platform Supports Each Rule

DialerBee provides compliance-supporting controls that help you meet the obligations above. Jordan TRC ships as a jurisdiction pack. The legal responsibility stays with the operator.

Jordanian rule	Control that supports it
No advertising messages 21:00 to 07:00, or on declared holidays	Jordan TRC ships as a jurisdiction pack, so the calling window for the jurisdiction is applied automatically
Consent explicit, documented, and limited as to duration	Consent created, updated and revoked as auditable records
Withdrawal must take effect and erase	A revocation takes effect on the next attempt, not the next list refresh
Operator opt-out, with no national register found	Your do-not-call list is imported once, then searched and checked on every attempt
Nuisance thresholds counted in calls per day and per week	Repeat attempts against the same contact limited automatically by the frequency rule
ADV and SRV codes with consistent sender and content	SMS sent under your own sender IDs from a reviewed template library
Use only numbers allocated by the TRC	Caller-ID pools owned exclusively per tenant, provisioned through your own carriers under BYOC
Recording only with a legal basis and prior notice	Recording with configurable retention, signed-URL playback, legal hold and per-tenant isolation
Keep bulk-message and complaint records for the TRC	Auditor export of recordings and an audit trail on every rule override
Reach Arabic-speaking contacts in Arabic	Language-aware AI across 11 languages, with UCS-2 aware SMS segment counting

Jordan Outbound Compliance Checklist

Obtain a general telecommunications licence from the TRC before providing a bulk messages service.
Get your subscription contracts pre-approved by the TRC.
Host all bulk-message servers inside Jordan.
Schedule advertising messages so the time of receipt falls outside 21:00 to 07:00, every day of the week.
Suspend advertising traffic on declared feasts, religious and official holidays and national occasions.
Label every advertising message with the ADV code and keep code, sender name and content consistent.
Never use the ALR or AWR codes unless you are sending for a competent government entity.
Record prior consent that is explicit, documented, and carries a stated duration and purpose.
Re-obtain consent when the nature, type or aims of the processing change.
Obtain specific consent before transferring or exchanging data for marketing purposes.
Give a free stop mechanism, honour it wholly or partially, and erase on withdrawal.
Keep repeat attempts well below the nuisance thresholds of four missed calls in a day or ten over seven days.
Appoint a data protection officer if you transfer databases outside Jordan, and keep transfer records.
Notify affected people within 24 hours and the Unit within 72 hours of a serious data breach.

Sources

Telecommunications Law No. (13) of 1995 and its amendments, TRC English translation. Original Official Gazette No. 4072, 1 October 1995; amended by Law No. 21 of 2011. TRC laws listing
Instructions Regulating the Sending of Bulk Messages, TRC Board Decision No. (18-10/2024) of 28 October 2024. TRC instructions listing
Instructions Regulating the Sending of Bulk Messages, TRC Board Decision No. (3-1/2011) of 4 January 2011, superseded.
Instructions on Procedures and Rules relating to Nuisance Complaints, TRC Board Decision No. (14-19/2011) of 27 December 2011.
Instructions Regulating the Retention of Communications Records, TRC Board Decision No. (1-13/2019) of 21 November 2019.
TRC National Numbering Plan.
Personal Data Protection Law No. (24) of 2023, Official Gazette pages 4338 to 4353.
Ministry of Digital Economy and Entrepreneurship, Personal Data Protection Directorate. MoDEE data protection directorate
Ministry news, Cabinet approval of the Regulation on Organising the Rights of the Data Subject, 2025.
Electronic Transactions Law No. 15 of 2015, full text searched for direct-marketing provisions.
Secondary source: IANA Time Zone Database, asia file, recording Jordan as a fixed UTC+3 zone since 28 October 2022.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the legal calling hours in Jordan?

Article 7(2) of the 2024 Bulk Messages Instructions prohibits sending or passing advertising messages between 21:00 and 07:00 throughout all days of the week, and during feasts, religious and official holidays and national occasions, without the TRC's prior approval. The 2011 predecessor made clear that the time of receipt must fall inside the permitted window. No statutory calling-hours window for outbound voice calls could be confirmed.

Do I need a licence to send bulk SMS in Jordan?

Yes. Article 3 of the 2024 Instructions states that no bulk-message sending or transit service may be provided until the licences and approvals required from the TRC have been obtained, Article 5(1) requires the bulk-message source to hold a general telecommunications licence, and Article 5(2) requires subscription contracts pre-approved by the TRC. Article 7(7) also requires all bulk-message servers to be located inside Jordan.

Does Jordan have a national Do Not Call register?

None was found. The full TRC instruments index, the 2011, 2020-draft and 2024 Bulk Messages Instructions, the Nuisance Complaints Instructions, the retention instructions and the Ministry's data-protection pages were all searched, and none establishes a register or a scrubbing duty. What exists is a free operator-level opt-out under Article 4(4), with the beneficiary notified of a stop or reactivation by SMS. This is a "not found" rather than a proven absence.

What are the ADV and SRV codes in Jordanian SMS?

Article 2 of the 2024 Instructions requires a category code immediately before the sender name: ADV for advertising and promotional content, SRV for service messages relating to a contracted service or sent at the beneficiary's request, and ALR and AWR for warning and awareness messages, which may be sent only by or for competent government entities. Article 4(1) and Article 5(3) require the code, the sender name and the content to be consistent.

Is consent required for marketing in Jordan?

Yes. PDPL Article 4(a) prohibits processing without the prior consent of the person concerned, and Article 5(a) requires that consent to be explicit, documented in writing or electronically, specified as to duration and purpose, and requested in clear, simple, non-misleading language. Article 14(a)(3) separately bars transferring data for the purpose of marketing products or services unless the person consents to that. There is no legitimate-interests route.

How many calls count as nuisance in Jordan?

Under the Nuisance Complaints Instructions of 27 December 2011, a complaint qualifies where there are at minimum two received calls each not exceeding 60 seconds, or two messages, or four missed calls in one day, or ten missed calls over seven days. Escalation runs from warning to partial disconnection for one week, full disconnection for 30 days, termination of the subscription, and a one-year bar on a new subscription.

What are the penalties for a data protection breach in Jordan?

Administratively, the Council may warn, suspend or revoke a licence or permit, or impose a fine of up to JOD 500 for each day the violation continues, capped at 3% of the violator's total annual revenues for the preceding financial year, and may publish the violation at the violator's expense. Criminally, Article 22(a) sets a fine of JOD 1,000 to JOD 10,000, doubled on repetition, and the court may order destruction of the database.

Can I record calls to Jordanian customers?

Only with a legal basis. Telecommunications Law Article 71 punishes recording a communication without any legal basis with imprisonment of one month to one year, a fine of JD 100 to JD 300, or both, and Article 56 makes telephone calls confidential under legal liability. A recording is personal data, so PDPL Article 9 requires written or electronic notice before processing starts. No announcement or beep-tone rule could be confirmed.