NEWS1 June 2015
US — The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is to vote on new regulations that could “seriously harm” surveys conducted over the phone, according to the Marketing Research Association (MRA).
The new rules would make the existing Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) much tougher. The TCPA, which was introduced in 1991, restricts most telephone research to mobile phones by requiring express prior consent to use automatic telephone dialling systems.
The new proposals propose: authorising call-blocking technology; a broadening of the definition of autodiallers; express prior consent for use of autodiallers to be written; penalising calling mobile phones that have been reassigned to new users and potentially extending the telemarketing opt-out rules to non-telemarketing calls using autodiallers. These regulations will be voted on, on June 18.
According to the MRA, the new rules “need to be rethought or rejected. Survey, opinion and marketing research calls need to be excluded from these changes, and preferably from the TCPA restrictions on autodialled calls to cell phones as a whole”.
Full details of the proposed regulations, and the MRA reaction, can be found here.