November 29th, 2004
Who'll Regulate VoIP-Using Telemarketers?
Direct marketers perform valuable services for their customers, but the very fact thatmore than 64million Americans are on their do-not-call lists elicits consternation on the part of these companies.
Today, the direct marketing industry pub DM News has an interesting take on whether or not the FCC’s stand-off attitude about some state-level VoIP service regulations will apply to calls originating from VoIP call centers.
Because these calls are made over the Internet rather than PSTN, this is a sticky wicket.
The consensus seems to be that while federally administered do-not-call lists won’t be affected, some question remains about the authority of teleservices compliance officers on the state level to deal with questionable telemarketing practices committed by VoIP-using telemarketers.
The problemwill become more urgent if and when large call centers migrate to VoIP. A variety of analyst quotes in the story failed to reach a consensus on howlikely and rapid thatmigration is likely to be.
Russell Shaw is an enterprise computing journalist, analyst and author based in Portland, Oregon. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
