Prior consent is still required to auto-dial mobile phones – a rule that the Marketing Research Association continues to campaign against – but it doesn’t need to be in writing. The MRA said the research profession was “gratified” that the FCC decided against making the rules even tougher.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) yesterday unanimously approved the new regulations, which will prohibit most telemarketing ‘robocalls’.

The law against auto-dialling mobiles without consent, introduced in 1991, makes it more time-consuming and expensive to include mobile numbers in survey samples because interviewers have to punch in every number by hand.

“By requiring all consent to be written, the proposed rules could have made it harder to conduct research based on viable representative samples,” said Howard Fienberg, the MRA’s director of government affairs.