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The Pipeline Signal
Tuesday, August 12, 2026 · 5 Min Read
WELCOME BACK!
There were some interesting insights the Telecommunications and Digital Government Regulatory Authority (TDRA) launched last week which called out since August 2024, AED19 million in fines, 9,433 phone numbers disconnected, 3,301 violations detected.
That’s a lot of money in fines. This is a grey area a lot of companies in the UAE tend to ignore. I’ve seen this happen for myself where an executive decision is made to go ahead with contacting prospects and ignoring the implications because the goal is to bring in more $$.
So, this is no longer a warning sign but an insight marketing teams should know as it’s been happening for a couple of years.
Here’s the part that gets interesting, the UAE has now regulated calls and SMS very tightly and not email. Not because email gets a pass but because the law just hasn’t been enforced yet. That’s the gap where most GCC outbound lives.
Straight from the field
Not kidding…
A while back I was running demand generation for the region with my team. We had the usual mix going; field events, ads, cold calling after events etc. Then one of our stakeholders shared a list of contacts with marketing. Ahem! We have all been there where we get a ton of suggestions from other teams on what we should be doing. So, the list contained potential prospects, worth going after.
That list got discussed for months. Yes, months.
What the discussion mainly revolved around when it would be done, and why it hadn't been done already. What the conversation never touched on was whether we were allowed to email or call any of them. That part was treated as settled before anyone said it out loud.
I'm not going to get into why the list was suggested or how the decision got made. What I do want to flag is that ideas like this land on marketing all the time, and it's on us to be the ones who ask the question nobody else is asking.
And I'll be honest, at the time I couldn't have told you which parts of it were legal either. That's why I went and looked.
Everything’s covered except your email.
And that’s by mistake, not a policy.
There are two laws that have set things off. Cabinet Resolution 56 of 2024 addresses the telemarketing rules and Cabinet Resolution 57 addresses the penalties. Both have been live since 2024 and most marketing teams I talk to have never read either. The next few paragraphs, I’m going to walk you through a few specifics what the laws expect from businesses.
Regarding calls:
The only allowed permitted hours are between 9am to 6pm and you need a prior TDRA approval to conduct telemarketing. The numbers you are calling from need to be registered under the company's commercial licence so personal numbers can't be used for promotional calls. This is the grey area many companies ignore. Hence the large number of fines issued.
It is also stated that you must identify your company and your purpose at the start of the call, and ask whether the person wants to continue before you pitch, record or register the call. This part is fine because it is typically best practise to do so when calling prospects so you don’t waste their time. It is recommended to avoid same-day follow-ups after someone declines or ends the call. Also, best practice would be to avoid calling them for a while. Use another channel such as paid marketing to retouch them and they will convert back into your funnel once they are interested.
By the way, fines run from AED10,000 to AED150,000 across eighteen violation categories, with the steepest reserved for calling a number on the Do Not Call Register.
Regarding SMS:
The TDRA's Unsolicited Electronic Communications policy, version 1.1, June 2022. Opt-in consent is required and the prohibited hours are between 9pm to 7am. The consent records kept for the sending period plus two years.
Note those are two different time windows for two different channels. Calls 9am to 6pm. SMS anything outside 9pm to 7am. Nobody I've asked knew both.
Cabinet Decision 56 defines telemarketing as calls "to consumers." Lot of companies take that at face value and think that applies to individual end users rather than B2B, and there is no source that clarifies whether business to business calls qualify. So, I can't tell you exactly that your SDR calling a procurement lead is in scope. It has been disclosed that Dh19 million has been issued, 9,433 numbers have been cut off so why would you want to put your company in this position?!
Now Email:
Email didn’t show up on either law but it would be covered in the UAE's federal data protection law, that passed in 2021. The law here broken up into two parts: 1) the law itself, then 2) the Executive Regulations carrying the penalties, the procedures and the regulator's powers. It’s been five years and the second part has never been issued. No penalty schedule nor complaint process. On the other hand, Saudi issued theirs. So your cold call and SMS channels are pretty regulated and your cold email sits in a gap created by a law that not ‘truly’ enforced.
What’s happening in Saudi you ask?
This is what it looks like once email has been fully regulated and it’s going to happen soon.
Saudi's PDPL Article 25 says you may not email advertising material without the recipient's prior consent, obtained before the first touch. No B2B exemption anywhere in the law, and contact details are expressly personal data. In simple terms, cold email to named individuals at Saudi companies does not fly.
The obvious question is if Saudi is similar to the UAE when it comes to email. The SDAIA issued 48 decisions in the twelve months to February 2026, with unconsented marketing among the named violation categories. Penalties reached SAR 5 million and doubled on repeat offences. Saudi also banned sending between 10pm and 9am, and 1am to 12pm in Ramadan, with consent buried in a privacy policy explicitly not counting.
I couldn't get the underlying CST regulation text to load, so I can't confirm whether it reaches B2B or only consumer messaging. I would assume it applies.
I can already hear the read on this. Great, email is still open, push harder while it lasts. But I would go the other way. Gaps like this close the day the Cabinet issues the regulations with no notice period. The list you built inside your CRM doesn't get clean on the day this gets enforced.
And the fine was never the part worry about, it's the procurement questionnaire asking how you sourced the contact, three months into a deal you thought you had won. All it takes is one complaint!
Only four days a week exist here
This is a fix quick that just requires management approval.
Country | Working week | Weekend |
|---|---|---|
UAE | MON-FRI (FRI HALF DAY, PUBLIC SECTOR) | Sat-Sun |
Saudi Arabia | SUN-THUR | Fri-Sat |
Qatar | SUN-THUR | FRI-SAT |
Kuwait | SUN-THUR | FRI-SAT |
Bahrain | SUN-THUR | FRI-SAT |
Oman | SUN-THUR | FRI-SAT |
Five of six GCC countries work from Sunday to Thursday. The UAE is the only country that doesn't. Which leaves only Monday to Thursday as shared full working days across the region. So a Sunday send is a Monday-equivalent in Saudi, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman, and is pretty much dead in the UAE.
Friday is the worst day to run a webinar day here and the global default of Tuesday 10am is misaligned with five of six Gulf markets, which is doable, except almost nobody has checked whether it's on purpose.
By the way the UAE private sector isn't required to follow the public week. This depends on each company. I know some companies that have a Mon-Sat work week and are off just one day a week. In most cases these are construction companies.
Then comes Ramadan. It starts around 8 February in 2027 and moves eleven days earlier each year, so by 2028 it lands almost entirely in January and February, overlapping with Q1 budget release for the first time in years. Every piece of published Ramadan marketing data I could find is retail. Nothing on B2B pipeline so I’m assuming nobody has truly measured it.
In my past experience, our growth marketing tactics really took a hit because by the time you come back from the winter holiday season, you only have a few weeks to execute your plans and get the most qualified leads to sales. If you don’t do so, your entire Q1 is looking really bad in terms of conversions to closed won. This depends entirely on your sales cycle but in most cases you need to start early with your pipeline, almost early Q4 to convert in Q1 the following year.
What the deck says vs What actually happens
Here’s what actually happens when it comes to building content for GCC. Most of your buyers read English just fine. In fact a huge number of the population are expats and the locals are well educated and understand English. This applies more to the UAE than Saudi. Translating your whole site for the B2B works from a search engine or what we should be preparing more for in terms of generative AI.
The Arabic-speaking and content part truly matters when speaking or working with other Arabic speaking prospects. It’s more of a community / culture thing. It shows you’re truly part of the place than just a transaction hello and bye.
GCC LENS
So what fills the funnel instead?
So, Calls and SMS are regulated, and email is one decision away from being regulated too. The top of a Gulf funnel has to come from somewhere with a cleaner consent basis. In practice that's inbound, partner and channel introductions, referrals, and events.
Which is a big part of why this market runs on rooms rather than sequences, and why people who fly in and call that inefficient are not thinking it through. It isn't only a cultural preference but it's also the compliant part.
The caveat I would want if I were reading this is I'm reasoning from the rules, not from a controlled test, and I don't know of anyone who has published a channel mix for compliant Gulf demand gen. Nobody has measured it.
Which is why the executive dinner keeps beating the expo floor here. Twenty of the right people in a room produce consented, documented relationships and four thousand badge scans produce a list you may not be allowed to use.
The next big events in the UAE are GITEX (runs 7 to 11 December) and Expand North Star (8 to 10). If you're building a 2027 Gulf number, the budget question isn't stand size, it's how many rooms you can get twenty right people into, and whether anyone on your team knows how to run one.
WHAT TO DO MONDAY
Open your outbound calendar and check one thing. What hours is your team actually dialling and sending emails? Make sure to capture all the 3 channels and the respective operating windows.
UAE calls: 9am to 6pm only. UAE SMS: nothing between 9pm and 7am.
Saudi SMS: nothing between 10pm and 9am. During Ramadan, nothing between 1am and 12pm.
Twenty minutes with whoever owns your inbound/outbound tools and processes. If your team is dialling UAE numbers at 7pm because that's 10am in Chicago, that's your first fix and it's easy. While you're there, check whether you can produce documented prior consent for your Saudi contacts. Not a privacy policy but a separable, per person consent, because consent inside a privacy policy is explicitly not valid there and the burden of proof is on you.
💬 REPLY & TELL ME
What hours does your team actually dial and send into the Gulf, and did anyone check?
Hit reply. I read every response, and the aggregate goes into a future Signal from the Field.
Karen, Founder @ The Pipeline Signal
11+ years building pipeline and turning it into closed-won revenue across high-growth tech companies. From a $2.5B AI unicorn prepping for IPO to construction tech platforms scaling globally to HR tech, I’ve covered a wide range of industries across different stages. I write from a GCC and North America POV because both taught me different things about how deals actually close.