Fax Ban Regulations
AH&LA supports common sense regulations allowing proper use of faxing as a communications and marketing tool.
In 2003, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued final regulations severely restricting the ability of business to legitimately communicate with customers, clients, members and associated via facsimile. The FCC regulations would have required prior written approval for any fax that included a financial aspect (for example, announcements for a weekend reduced rate at a hotel, a monthly membership luncheon for a fee, a bill, or membership renewal notice); required that the business renew these approvals regularly; and risk fines for any violation.
AH&LA and the business community immediately asked the FCC to stay or delay implementation of these onerous regulations. Implementation of these regulations would have been particularly burdensome on small businesses. This stay was granted until August 2005 and allowed for a further review of this issue.
In addition, the 109th Congress (2005-06) considered legislation that would direct the FCC to develop reasonable approaches to eliminate what is junk faxing, while allowing industry with an established business relationship to communicate with its clients and customers.
In 2005, legislation was introduced in Congress to offer a reasonable approach to fax communication. The “Junk Fax Prevention Act of 2005” (S. 714), introduced by Sen. Gordon Smith (R-OR), would ensure that business can send faxes to customers with whom they already have an established business relationship without having to obtain written prior approval. This legislation required that a business offer three features in any fax:
- A statement that the recipient may make a request to the sender of the unsolicited advertisement not to send any future unsolicited advertisements to a telephone facsimile machine or machines;
- A domestic contact telephone and facsimile machine number for the recipient to transmit such a request (these numbers must be available at any time on any day of the week); and
- A cost-free mechanism for a recipient to transmit a request to the sender of the unsolicited advertisement.
On July 9, 2005, the President signed S. 714 into law (Public Law 109-21).
The FCC provides a guidance Webpage on this law and its implementation.
For more information, contact Kevin Maher, AH&LA senior vice president for Governmental Affairs, at (202) 289-3147,
kmaher@ahla.com.(Updated August 2008)