The Federal Trade Commission's new rules regulating U.S. telemarketing calls (scheduled to go into effect on September 1) will have a significant impact on the VoIP industry. According to the rules, prerecorded commercial telemarketing calls will be prohibited, unless the telemarketer has obtained permission in writing from consumers who want to receive such calls.
Given that most auto-dialer traffic is delivered over VoIP networks today, the new rules will have a tremendous impact on many aspects of the VoIP industry.
Based on my own unscientific calculations, I estimate that auto-dialer generated calls represent at least 25% of the total number of VoIP calls made today. When these calls are no longer permitted, it will affect the businesses of the vendors that make and run the predictive dialer software, the call centers that handle the calls, and the networks that terminate the calls. This is business that will be lost forever to the VoIP world, as marketers are forced to shift their budgets to other media. Based on current market size estimates of $1.1 Billion (for the affected industries), that could mean a contraction amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars (although auto-dialer traffic constitutes a large percentage of VoIP calls, actual revenue is significantly less - percentage-wise - since the cost of each call is relatively small.
Anyone that is involved in the wholesale VoIP termination business will know that predictive dialer traffic has already changed the landscape. In particular, the deluge of auto-dialer calls has forced most U.S. network providers to impose stringent surcharges (in most cases, having this traffic profile will result in a $0.01 surcharge on calls with a duration of less than 6 seconds) and to forcefully adhere to RBOC vs. Non-RBOC blending rules.
The aftershocks of the new rules will likely have similar repercussions.
Given that most auto-dialer traffic is delivered over VoIP networks today, the new rules will have a tremendous impact on many aspects of the VoIP industry.
Based on my own unscientific calculations, I estimate that auto-dialer generated calls represent at least 25% of the total number of VoIP calls made today. When these calls are no longer permitted, it will affect the businesses of the vendors that make and run the predictive dialer software, the call centers that handle the calls, and the networks that terminate the calls. This is business that will be lost forever to the VoIP world, as marketers are forced to shift their budgets to other media. Based on current market size estimates of $1.1 Billion (for the affected industries), that could mean a contraction amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars (although auto-dialer traffic constitutes a large percentage of VoIP calls, actual revenue is significantly less - percentage-wise - since the cost of each call is relatively small.
Anyone that is involved in the wholesale VoIP termination business will know that predictive dialer traffic has already changed the landscape. In particular, the deluge of auto-dialer calls has forced most U.S. network providers to impose stringent surcharges (in most cases, having this traffic profile will result in a $0.01 surcharge on calls with a duration of less than 6 seconds) and to forcefully adhere to RBOC vs. Non-RBOC blending rules.
The aftershocks of the new rules will likely have similar repercussions.
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