ACA International, which represents credit and collection professionals,...

ACA International, which represents credit and collection professionals, asked the FCC to clarify how predictive dialers are treated under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. While a predictive dialer, which dials a list of phone numbers and connects answered dials to people making calls, can be an Automated Telephone Dialing System (ATDS), it’s not necessarily one, ACA said. The TCPA prohibits automated calls to cellphones, emergency lines, a hospital emergency number, a physician’s office or a hospital room, among other protected phone lines. “That a predictive dialer can be an autodialer if it meets the statutory definition of an autodialer” does “not (and cannot) mean that it must be an ATDS under the TCPA,” ACA said (http://bit.ly/1vBaT8t). “Fundamentally, the statutory elements of an ATDS must be met in order for equipment to be considered an ATDS under the statute.” The filing, posted by the FCC Wednesday, was in docket 02-278.