Originally published at ictdialer.com
Pennsylvania's rewritten telemarketing law takes effect on Sunday, 18 October 2026. From then on, texts and ringless voicemail count as telephone solicitations, cold outreach is limited to 9:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. with no Sundays, and prerecorded or artificial voice calls need prior express written consent. If your auto dialer software reaches Pennsylvania numbers, change your schedules and consent records this week.
The law is Senate Bill 992, signed on 20 July 2026. It amends the state's Telemarketer Registration Act, which dates from 1996. The bill itself isn't new, but the date it starts biting is, and plenty of campaign calendars still run on the federal 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. window. Because 18 October falls on a Sunday, which the new law closes anyway, your first working day under the new rules is Monday, 19 October.
What changes on 18 October
Five changes matter for anyone running outbound campaigns.
Texts and ringless voicemail are now solicitations. The definition of "telephone solicitation" now names text messages and ringless voicemail explicitly. If your SMS or voicemail drops sit outside your calling rules today, they won't be outside the law next week.
Calling hours shrink. Solicitations are allowed only between 9:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m. No solicitations at all on Sundays. Legal holidays were already off limits and still are.
Written consent replaces "express request". The old exception for calls the person had asked for is gone. In its place is prior express written consent (PEWC), defined in a way that largely follows the federal TCPA rules. The exception for people you've done business with in the last 12 months stays.
Robocalls get their own definition. A robocall is "a telephone solicitation that uses an automated dialing system to deliver prerecorded or artificial voice calls or messages". These need PEWC, whether the line is residential, business or wireless, unless an emergency or another statutory exemption applies.
Deception gets named. The law bans unfair or deceptive practices used to get consent, and bans using "any technology or any synthetic or computer-generated messaging to defraud, deceive or mislead" the person called.
Penalties don't move: up to $1,000 per violation, or up to $3,000 if the person called is 60 or older. One enforcement tool goes away. The provision that let the Attorney General revoke a telemarketer's registration after repeated violations has been deleted. And there's a new registration exemption for businesses whose calls don't meet the definition of telephone solicitation at all.
The calling window is the change you'll trip over first
Most dialer compliance setups are built around the federal TCPA window of 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. in the called party's local time. Pennsylvania now cuts an hour off the morning and two hours off the evening, and closes Sunday completely. If you run a single national campaign with one schedule, Pennsylvania contacts will be inside your window and outside the state's.
There's one piece of good news. All of Pennsylvania sits in the Eastern time zone, so you need one schedule for the whole state, not several.
The evening cut is the one that hurts most. For a lot of B2C campaigns, 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. is when people actually pick up. Losing 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. in Pennsylvania means your contact rate there will probably fall, and your predictive pacing will need time to settle on the new numbers. Plan for that rather than being surprised by it on the first Monday.
How to set up your auto dialer software for Pennsylvania
Here's the setup we'd suggest to anyone running ICTDialer, and most of it applies to any dialer.
1. Give Pennsylvania its own campaigns
Split Pennsylvania contacts into their own contact group and run them in their own campaigns. That lets you give them their own schedule without tightening every other state to match. Use the state from the customer's address where you have it, not just the area code. Mobile numbers move with people, so a 215 number may belong to someone in Florida, and a Pennsylvania resident may still carry a number from another state. If you only have the area code, err toward treating it as Pennsylvania.
2. Set the schedule to the new window
In ICTDialer, campaign scheduling lets you pick the weekdays and the start and stop times for each campaign, and the dialer starts and stops on its own. For a Pennsylvania campaign, that means Monday to Saturday, starting at 9:00 a.m. Eastern. Set the stop a few minutes before 7:00 p.m. so that retries and calls already ringing don't spill past the line. Leave Sunday unticked.
Holidays need a manual step. Put the year's legal holidays in your team calendar and pause Pennsylvania campaigns on those days. It's easy to forget, and "we forgot" isn't a defence.
3. Put texts and voicemail drops on the same rules
If you send SMS or ringless voicemail to Pennsylvania numbers, those campaigns need the same window and the same Sunday block as your voice campaigns. This is the gap most likely to catch teams out, because SMS is often scheduled by a different person or from a different tool. If it touches a Pennsylvania number, it follows the Pennsylvania clock.
4. Record written consent per number
If you rely on consent to call, you now need written consent that meets the PEWC standard. Store it against each number: when it was given, where (web form, paper, recorded call), the exact wording the person agreed to, and which campaigns it covers. If you can't produce that record for a number, treat the number as cold and keep it inside the strict window. For prerecorded or AI-voice campaigns, no PEWC means no call.
5. Keep opt-outs instant
ICTDialer keeps a master DNC list and a user DNC list per account, and contacts who opt out during a campaign are added to the user list automatically. Make sure the Pennsylvania campaigns use both lists, and that opt-outs from texts land in the same place as opt-outs from calls. A person who says stop by text and then gets a voice call from you the next morning is exactly the complaint you don't want.
6. Check how your AI voice calls introduce themselves
ICTDialer's AI Voice Agent is a live product, and the new Pennsylvania wording on synthetic messaging targets deception, not the technology itself. Even so, an AI agent that lets people assume they're talking to a human, or that makes claims a human rep wouldn't be allowed to make, is now riskier in Pennsylvania than it was. Pair this with the disclosure points in our post on AI voice disclosure state rules. And remember that an AI voice call is an artificial voice call, so the PEWC requirement for robocalls applies.
What about calls made with consent or to existing customers?
The law carves calls made with PEWC, and calls to people you've done business with in the last 12 months, out of its definition of a telephone solicitation. That suggests the strict hours bite hardest on cold outreach. But how far those carve-outs reach is a question for your lawyer, not for a blog post. Our advice is practical. Unless you've had that conversation and it's documented, run every Pennsylvania campaign inside the new window. Losing a couple of evening hours on warm leads costs far less than defending a claim at $3,000 a call.
Where this sits next to the federal rules
Nothing here replaces federal law. The TCPA, the national Do Not Call registry and the FCC's consent rules still apply on top. Pennsylvania is stricter on hours and on what counts as a solicitation, so you follow both and the stricter rule wins. The FCC's own changes to how consumers revoke consent are still working through the process too, so check the current state of play in our roundup of 2026 TCPA rules for auto dialers.
Pennsylvania is also part of a pattern. A growing number of states have written their own telemarketing statutes with tighter hours, text messages brought into scope and stricter consent. If your dialer setup assumes one national rulebook, this is a good week to rebuild it around per-state campaigns.
What we couldn't confirm
We based this post on the bill summary from Kelley Drye & Warren's Ad Law Access team and the coverage that followed it. A few points we haven't seen confirmed in the official legislative record, so we've left them out: the Act number assigned to the law, and some commentators' readings on private lawsuits and on liability for companies that hire outside telemarketers. If those matter to how you run campaigns, read the enrolled bill with counsel before Monday.
This post isn't legal advice. It's what we'd change in a dialer this week if we were calling into Pennsylvania.
Frequently asked questions
When does the new Pennsylvania telemarketing law take effect?
On 18 October 2026. That's a Sunday, and Sunday solicitations are banned under the new law, so the first day you can call under it is Monday, 19 October.
What are the new calling hours in Pennsylvania?
Telephone solicitations are allowed between 9:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m. No solicitations on Sundays or legal holidays. All of Pennsylvania is in the Eastern time zone.
Do text messages count under the Pennsylvania law?
Yes. The new definition of telephone solicitation expressly includes text messages and ringless voicemail, so SMS campaigns need the same hours and consent handling as voice.
What are the penalties?
Up to $1,000 per violation, or up to $3,000 if the person called is 60 or older. Those amounts didn't change in the rewrite.
Can I still use prerecorded or AI voice messages in Pennsylvania?
Yes, with prior express written consent from the person you're calling, unless the call is for an emergency or falls under another statutory exemption. Without that consent, don't send it.
Does my auto dialer software handle this on its own?
Not on its own. A dialer runs the rules you give it. In ICTDialer you set the schedule, contact groups and DNC lists per campaign, so a separate Pennsylvania campaign with a Monday to Saturday, 9 to 7 schedule covers the hours. Consent records and holiday pauses are still yours to manage.
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