The Regulator’s view: calls are electronic communication
Section 69(1) names “automatic calling machines, facsimile machines, SMSs or e-mail” — but the list is illustrative (“including”), and in its Guidance Note on Direct Marketing (3 December 2024) the Regulator took the step the telemarketing industry had long argued against:
“It is the view of the Regulator that telephone calling is electronic communication by virtue of telephone communications technology having become digital over time.”
On that reading, live telemarketing to strangers sits under the section 69 opt-in regime, not the opt-out regime — consent, customer relationship, or the once-off recorded consent ask.
The debate — and the coming court test
The Guidance Note is “advisory in nature” by its own terms, and practitioners have pushed back: a live human conversation, they argue, is not what the legislature meant by “electronic communication”, whose listed examples are all automated or written media — and definitions in other statutes cut both ways. The question will likely be settled in court: the Regulator has signalled it wants a judicial test of telemarketing under POPIA, and the matric-results litigation showed the courts are willing to reject the Regulator’s interpretations (see the enforcement tracker). Until a judgment lands, the practical reality stands: the Guidance Note is the enforcement posture of the body that issues enforcement notices. This page tracks the position and will be updated as it develops — last reviewed June 2026.
What prudent telemarketing looks like in 2026
- Call your own customers within the s 69(3) legs — similar products, opt-out honoured on every call
- For strangers: one call whose content is the consent request (s 69(2)), electronically recorded (regs 6.2–6.3) — pitch only after a yes
- No purchased "opted-in" calling lists — consent must be to YOUR marketing, and opt-out lists are not consent (reg 6.4)
- Identify the seller and offer a cease-contact route on every call (s 69(4))
- Maintain the objection and withheld-consent registers the Guidance Note requires — and scrub against them before every campaign
- Watch for the national opt-out registry flagged for 2025/26 — build suppression infrastructure now