New FCC Rules

The long-awaited approval by the Office of Management and Budget of the new FCC rules has today been published in the Federal Register.  For those just tuning in, the FCC released a Report and Order in February of this year that made significant changes to its regulations issued under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act.  These changes had implementation periods that were based on the publication of the OMB’s approval.  Accordingly, the following timeframes now apply for implementation of the following rules:

•    October 16, 2013 – Provisions requiring prior express consent be in writing for telemarketers employing predictive dialers to call cell phones
•    October 16, 2013 – Provisions phasing out the EBR exemption related to prerecorded calls to residential lines (i.e., telemarketers have until 10/16/2013 to cease utilization of the EBR relationship as evidence of consumer consent to receive prerecorded telemarketing calls)

•    November 15, 2012 – Provisions regarding calculation of abandonment rate (i.e., per campaign, successive 30 day measurement rule)
•    January 14, 2013 – Provisions requiring an automated, interactive opt-out mechanism for prerecorded telemarketing calls and for abandoned call messages

Click Here for the FCC Report and Order Summary

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