Earlier this year, the Federal Communications Commission revised the regulations concerning the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. What does this mean for your business and for the faxing industry as a whole? Let's take a look:
Background on the TCPA
The TCPA was passed in 1991 and introduced important guidelines for using the phone lines for marketing purposes. According to Social Barrel contributor Panos Mavrikos, the original purpose of the TCPA was to protect against unwanted solicitors such as telemarketers. It established the Do Not Call list and contained a few provisions against the use of recorded messages and auto-dialers. It also prohibited the use of traditional fax machines to be used as unsolicited marketing devices – in other words, companies couldn't just mass transmit flyers or other promotional materials via fax.
Recently, however, the FCC declared that the act could be used to cover the use of Internet-based fax systems that still use phone lines. This means that would-be telemarketers that want to use fax machines to mass broadcast promotional materials wouldn't be able to do so.
"Now, companies can include all of their fax machines under this regulatory umbrella."
Why is this ruling important? Under the previous rules, the TCPA protected consumers and businesses from receiving unwanted messages via their traditional fax machines. However, that courtesy didn't extent to Internet fax systems. Now, companies can include all of their fax machines under this regulatory umbrella – no matter whether they're using traditional fax or Internet faxing that takes place over phone lines.
Good news for enterprises
Since the FCC ruling on the TCPA effectively prohibits advertising companies to make use of even your Internet faxing systems to send unsolicited messages, companies can now enjoy a sense of peace when it comes to their Internet faxing.
If companies still have an Internet-based fax machine in place, they now don't have to worry about receiving unsolicited marketing messages – much like putting your fax equipment on the Do Not Call list, this ruling basically protects your machine from faxing spam. Therefore, you can enjoy all the benefits of Internet faxing systems with none of the spam-heavy drawbacks that may have been present before.
Another way to ensure your fax machines remain unclogged of spam? Toss out the physical equipment and invest in cloud-based FoIP solutions.
Does this ruling affect cloud-based systems?
More companies are beginning to figure out that FoIP is the way to go when it comes to their faxing strategy. According to TMCnet contributor Blaise McNamee, a 2013 report from Davidson Consulting projected that the FoIP market would reach a value of $700 million in 2016 – driving the growth of the overall fax service market to $2.36 billion in 2017.
So the question is: Will the TCPA ruling impact cloud-based fax systems? The short answer is, in fact, no. Enterprises can still take advantage of cloud-based fax to improve their communications strategies.
Without having to worry about faxing spam, it becomes even easier to send and receive confidential documents over secure virtual servers. Mavrikos pointed out that email-to-fax systems were never subject to spam in the first place because most corporate fax solutions prohibit broadcast faxing altogether. Therefore, the recent TCPA ruling doesn't have a specific impact on those companies currently utilizing FoIP as part of their communications strategies.
"E -faxes are sent as a fax over a telephone line to a telephone facsimile machine and are thus subject to TCPA and the Commission's rules," the FCC wrote, according to JDSupra Business Advisor. "By contrast, a fax sent as an email over the Internet – e.g., a fax attached to an email message or a fax whose content has been pasted into an email message – is not subject to the TCPA."
This means you can continue to utilize your cloud-based fax solutions regardless of what the current law states about the use of phone lines for faxing. The cloud is a safe, convenient way to send, receive and store confidential documents that would traditionally be sent via fax technology. And, since fax solutions generally already have provisions in place that prohibit spamming via email, you can conduct your business without having to worry about promotional messages in your inbox.
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