UAE outbound calling guide: TDRA hours, DNC and caller ID rules.

The Telecommunications and Digital Government Regulatory Authority, TDRA (الهيئة العامة لتنظيم قطاع الاتصالات والحكومة الرقمية), enforces the telemarketing rules set by Cabinet Decision No. 56 of 2024 on regulating telemarketing via telephone calls and its companion Cabinet Resolution No. 57 of 2024. Both took effect on 27 August 2024. Before that date the UAE relied on softer guidance; since then the rules carry a fixed fine table.

Enforcement is not only federal. In February 2025, Dubai's Corporation for Consumer Protection and Fair Trade fined 159 companies under the same Cabinet Resolutions, so an emirate-level consumer body can act on its own. Telecom licensees also carry a standing duty to reduce spam with a UAE link on their networks, which is why carrier-side blocking is a real risk alongside the fines.

The regime is clearly being used. Reported cumulative fines stood at Dh3.8 million by December 2024 and reached Dh19.19 million by June 2026, when TDRA also reported 9,433 numbers disconnected. No new or amended telemarketing instrument dated 2025 or 2026 was found in reachable sources: enforcement has grown, the rulebook has not changed.

Yes, for marketing. Article 4 of Cabinet Decision No. 56 of 2024 requires consent before any electronic marketing is sent, and TDRA's anti-spam regulation defines spam as marketing sent without the recipient's consent. The UAE then adds something most markets do not have: an in-call gate. At the start of the call the agent must ask whether the person wishes to continue, before the marketing begins. Build it as a scripted branch with its own disposition, so a "no" ends the call and is recorded.

Two opt-out rights sit behind consent. The federal PDPL lets a person object to processing for direct marketing, and Article 6 of the 2023 law on Trading by Modern Technological Means lets consumers choose whether to receive marketing by call, email or social media. Calls the consumer started are outside the telemarketing rules, which is why inbound lines and callbacks the customer requested are treated differently from cold outreach.

How consent must be recorded, and whether it expires, is not published. Keep the source, timestamp and channel anyway, because a client audit will ask. DialerBee's UAE TDRA pack applies a two-year maximum on consent, so a record that has aged past two years stops authorising calls without anyone having to find it.

Residents opt out themselves by texting DNCR to 2211, and TDRA has run public campaigns encouraging them to. Calling a registered number for marketing is prohibited outright, with the reported penalty at up to Dh150,000, the top of the company band. Because people can register at any moment, a list scrubbed last month is not a clean list today.

What is not published: which entity operates the register, how a telemarketer gains access, and how often lists must be scrubbed. Scrub before every campaign run, keep dated evidence of each scrub, and make sure the check happens at the moment of dialling rather than only when the list was imported.

The earlier reporting sets a cap of no more than one marketing call a day. A later report describes "once daily or three times weekly" with a three-day cooling-off after a refusal, which conflicts with it, so do not write a weekly number or a cooling-off period into policy until TDRA confirms it. Both versions agree on the part that matters most: calling someone again on the same day after they have declined is a violation, reported at Dh10,000 to Dh50,000. On a predictive or power campaign, that means a refusal disposition has to suppress the number for the rest of the day across every campaign, not just the one that took the refusal.

Yes. The consumer must be told at the beginning of the call that it is being recorded, with fines reported at Dh10,000 to Dh30,000; another summary of the same fine table gives up to Dh50,000, and one report frames the duty as permission rather than notice. Behind that sits criminal exposure: Article 431 of the Penal Code penalises recording without consent. Design to the stricter reading: play the announcement, capture the acknowledgement, and make the announcement available in Arabic and English so the person actually understands it. No mandatory retention period for telemarketing recordings is published, so set one deliberately and document why.

Treat them as covered. Article 4 of Cabinet Decision No. 56 of 2024 reaches electronic marketing sent through messages on social media platforms, and TDRA's anti-spam regulation makes consent the default for any marketing message. No opt-out keyword, sender-ID registration regime or messaging-specific time window is published, so apply the voice rules to messaging. A follow-up WhatsApp after a refused call is still marketing to someone who just said no.

Cost is set by Meta per delivered message and follows the recipient's country. On Meta's USD rate card effective 1 October 2026, a marketing message to a UAE number costs $0.0576 and a utility message $0.0157. Meta also publishes an AED rate card, and businesses billed in AED pay from it. See our WhatsApp Business API pricing guide for the volume tiers.

It depends where the controller sits. Onshore, the federal law is Federal Decree-Law No. 45 of 2021 (the PDPL), issued 26 September 2021. Its Executive Regulations were still unpublished as at January 2025, and the PDPL sets no fines of its own; the often-quoted Dh50,000 to Dh500,000 range comes from Article 13 of the Cyber Crime Law. Health information relating to services provided in the UAE may not be stored, processed or transferred abroad without a ministerial decision, which matters for clinics running reminder campaigns.

The financial free zones run their own regimes. In the DIFC, Data Protection Law No. 5 of 2020 requires controllers to disclose direct-marketing use and offer an express objection right before data first goes to third parties for it. In the ADGM, the Data Protection Regulations 2021 allow legitimate interests in many cases, provided an objection right is offered at collection and in every communication. Whether Cabinet Decision No. 56 of 2024 reaches calls made from inside either zone is not confirmed. Our GCC data protection guide compares the regimes.