The Telecommunications Industry Standard

The Telecommunications Industry Standard

The Telecommunications (Telemarketing and Research Calls) Industry Standard 2017 applies to all voice calls made to Australian numbers that: offer, advertise or promote goods, services, land, interests in land, business opportunities or investment opportunities.

  • A caller must ensure that calling line identification (CLI) is enabled at the time they make or attempt to make a call, or cause a call to be made.
  • Telephone numbers for return contact by the call recipient must remain available for at least 30 days from when the original call was made to the call recipient.

When a call recipient makes a return call to the number transmitted by CLI, they must be able to obtain the following information within a reasonable period of time:

  • the name of the employer of the person who made the call
  • the purpose of the call
  • who caused the call to be made

Time Difference

Differences in time within Australia must be observed for the Permitted call hours to be followed. Check out the time differences below the image of the Australian continent. Take note of the changes with Daylight Savings Time (DST).

Fiji is set as UTC +12. That makes the difference between the time range from 1 – 4 hours (DST). This means you cannot call someone in WA when it is 9AM in VIC. Permitted call hours are dependent on the local time of the person being called

 

Calling times

Telemarketers and researchers are only able to call during the times set out below, unless the consumer has provided explicit consent to being called at that time.

 

Type of Call  

Weekdays 

Saturday 

  Sunday 

National public holidays 

Telemarketing calls

9:00am – 8:00pm  

9:00am – 5:00pm

No calls allowed

No calls allowed

 

Terminating a call

  You must terminate a call immediately if:

  • you are asked for the call to be terminated or the consumer otherwise indicates that they do not wish to continue the call
  • you are made aware that the person you are calling is not at their usual residential address, the time at the person’s current location is outside of the permitted calling times, and the called person does not specifically state that they would like the call to be continued.