Regulation of the Austrian mobile market runs through two authorities — RTR-GmbH (Broadcasting and Telecom Regulatory GmbH) as the telecoms regulator and the Data Protection Authority (DSB) for privacy oversight. The Telecommunications Act 2021 (TKG, BGBl. I 190/2021) replaces TKG 2003 and consolidates EU Directive 2018/1972 (European Electronic Communications Code). This page distils the SMS-relevant rules and compares the three national networks A1, Magenta and Drei against the data we see daily through 4notify routing.
| Network | Prefixes | Market share | 4G | 5G | Alpha Sender | STOP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A1 Telekom Austria Vienna | +43 664 · +43 681 · +43 688 | ≈ 38 % | 98,9 % | 84 % | ✓ Allowed | STOP |
| Magenta Austria Vienna (formerly T-Mobile Austria) | +43 676 · +43 678 · +43 680 | ≈ 31 % | 98,2 % | 78 % | ✓ Allowed | STOP |
| Drei (Hutchison Drei Austria) Vienna | +43 660 · +43 670 · +43 699 | ≈ 30 % | 97,4 % | 71 % | ✓ Allowed | STOP |
Marketing SMS/email to natural persons requires prior consent. Soft opt-in applies for existing customer relationships on similar own goods/services. Every marketing message must include a simple, free-of-charge unsubscribe option.
Connection and location data are purpose-bound. Use for marketing — even in anonymised aggregate — requires a separate subscriber consent.
Portability between the three networks must complete within one working day of application acceptance. Routing without an HLR lookup means SMS land in the former host network — delivery fails or runs late.
Up to 11 characters allowed; pre-registration with the aggregator is mandatory. Spoofing well-known brands (A1, Magenta, Erste Bank, Polizei) triggers carrier blocking and can be sanctioned by the RTR with up to EUR 50 000.
Listed numbers are excluded from cold marketing. The list must be screened before every campaign — breaches are sanctioned as unfair competition (UWG § 1).
Data minimisation, purpose limitation, storage limitation. Phone numbers count as personal data. Audit logs for send operations must be kept for at least 1 year — 5 years in FMA-regulated industries.
Administrative fines up to EUR 50 000 per breach (TKG § 188). For systematic marketing spam without consent, 2023 rulings reached EUR 200 000 (RTR decisions). On GDPR-relevant breaches (e.g. processing without legal basis) the DSB can add up to 4% of global annual turnover or EUR 20 m.
Germanys Robinson list (DDV) has no legal effect in Austria. Marketing to Austrian numbers must screen against the Austrian WKO Robinson list. Maintaining both lists is standard practice for cross-border campaigns.
The RTR is the complaint endpoint for telecoms services. On repeat SMS-spam complaints against a sender, the RTR opens proceedings, requests evidence (consent logs, sender-ID registration) and can order carriers to block the sender ID. Complaints usually flow through rtr.at/streitschlichtung.
Hardly. SMS runs over the signalling channel (SS7/Diameter), not the data layer. 5G rollout barely shifts delivery rates. 5G matters for RCS Business Messaging (RBM), which could reshape the SMS market over the next few years — all three AT networks have supported RBM since 2024.
Both implement EU Directive 2018/1972, but Austria interprets more strictly — on consent granularity, on the pre-registration of sender IDs (looser in DE) and through interlocking with the Austrian Data Protection Act (DSG), which adds national specifics on top of GDPR.
Eight blueprints walk you from the first GDPR consent to a production-ready SMS routing strategy.
