In 2015, the FCC issued an order that addressed certain aspects of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. Congress enacted the TCPA in 1991 to address perceived abuses of telephone equipment that allowed entities to autodial consumers’ phones.

Three of the issues addressed in ACA will affect all entities that call consumers. Specifically, the FCC’s 2015 order held that a device meets the statutory definition of “automatic telephone dialing system,” generally known as an ATDS, if it could be configured to autodial. The order also addressed two consent issues, holding that callers were permitted only one “safe harbor” call when a consumer had consented to be autodialed on his or her cellphone but the cellphone number had since been reassigned to a different consumer, and that consumers who consent to be autodialed may later revoke that consent by any reasonable means.