Ftc/Fcc Coordinate Do-Not-Call Efforts

Circulation Management, August 1, 2003

As expected, the Federal Communi-cations Commission is backing the Federal Trade Commission's national do-not-call registry, which will provide a "one-stop shop" for marketers. The registry will supplement current company-specific lists and merge existing state lists.

The national registry was just one of the FTC's Telemarketing Sales Rule amendments adopted last December, which also include tougher requirements for advance-consent marketing, a 3-percent abandonment rate for predictive dialers and mandatory transmission of caller-ID information (February, page 11).

In March, Congress enacted the Do Not Call Implementation Act, which authorized funding for the FTC's national registry and directed the FCC to "maximize consistency" with the FTC's TSR.

With the FCC now onboard, the national list will cover telemarketing activities of common carriers, banks, savings and loan institutions, and federal credit unions - which account for a large number of outbound telemarketing calls - and apply to both interstate and intrastate calls.

According to the FCC, states will not be required to discontinue use of their own DNC lists, but they must include national DNC list registrants from their state. Federal DNC rules will constitute a "floor," superceding all less restrictive state rules. States may only establish more restrictive laws governing intrastate telemarketing.

"We're very pleased that the FCC took action on what we advocated from the start - to preempt states on interstate calls," says Jim Conway, VP, government relations for the Direct Marketing Association. "That's very important since it takes away the states' ability to have a myriad of different regulations that telemarketers have to follow."

The FCC will uphold the FTC's established business relationship provision - allowing a company to contact a customer for 18 months after a business transaction (or the last delivery of a magazine issue) or three months after a customer inquiry or application.

Among the other revisions to its rules implementing the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991, the FCC announced in June that it will allow telemarketers to deliver a prerecorded identification message to consumers, as required under the FTC's 3-percent abandonment rate, safe harbor provision. The agency also will require marketers to obtain express consent, in writing, before sending faxed advertisements to customers; and may hold fax broadcasters liable for unsolicited faxing, if there is a "high degree of involvement or actual notice of the unlawful activity."