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The Federal Communication Commission’s new Declaratory Ruling and Order regarding the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), sent ripples through the telemarketing industry when it was released earlier this month. Pundits and businesses are still making sense of what the new ruling means, and how firms will have to adjust in the face of the rule clarifications.

One outcome looks to be that businesses will need to update their consents for calls and texts that are marketing or sales-related in nature.

With the broader definition of what constitutes an auto dialer that the new ruling defined, a much larger percentage of business communications now will require consent. For many businesses, it now is necessary to seek consent for the first time.

Businesses also must take greater pains to ensure that their business processes quickly adjust when they discover that the contact information in their databases is outdated. The rule clarification states that if a business discovers that a number no longer leads to the customer in question, the business must immediately cease calling the number. This one-strike policy raises the stakes for poor business processes that don’t adjust immediately.

Further, the clarification of the TCPA also gives greater power to consumers that no longer want to be called or sent text messages by businesses. The new ruling says that consumers can change their mind at any time and revoke permission, and businesses need to be ready to capture this revocation of consent and act on it immediately or fall afoul of the TCPA.

While the Order issued by the FCC (News - Alert) was effective immediately since it is a clarification and not actually new regulation, there is a grace period for most businesses. According to some experts, full compliance is required after 90 days from the release of the clarification since in practice it is not possible for businesses to adjust immediately to the changed regulatory landscape.

This gives businesses a little time to fix their telemarketing practices, but not a lot. There’s a reason that we’ve been devoting a lot of space to the rule clarification recently: The clarification matters, and businesses would be wise to adjust immediately or flirt with TCPA violations that could land them in the courts.