DNC — Do-Not-Call
What is DNC?
A Do-Not-Call (DNC) registry is a government-run or carrier-run list of phone numbers whose owners have opted out of receiving unsolicited marketing calls. In markets that operate one — the US National DNC Registry, the UK's Telephone Preference Service (TPS/CTPS), and equivalents elsewhere — a business must scrub its outbound campaigns against that list before dialing, and registrations stay active for a defined period (31 days in the US refresh cycle) that the scrub has to respect.
More detail
DNC obligations are caller-owned: the platform supplies the dialer and the suppression machinery, the business supplies the intent to campaign and the responsibility for who it dials. A number that appeared on a registry last quarter may now be off it, and a number may also land on a business's own internal do-not-call list (opt-outs it captured itself) even when the public registry says nothing — the two layers are separate and both bind.
Orbit layers registry scrubbing on top of its suppression pipeline: campaign destinations are checked against the tenant's uploaded suppression lists and any registry snapshot the tenant has subscribed to, and a registered destination is dropped before dispatch. Because the control is tenant-owned, it fails open where no registry feed has been configured rather than assuming a platform-global registry subscription for every tenant.
DNC is not the same as opt-out (STOP) handling: STOP is per-sender and per-channel, captured from a real recipient, while a DNC registry is a public central list that a recipient joins once and every sender then has to respect. Compliant senders enforce both; one does not discharge the other.
Frequently asked
- Does a number on a DNC registry ever come off it?
- In markets with a defined registration period — the US National DNC Registry keeps registrations active permanently, but several markets (including some European equivalents) run time-limited listings — the refresh cycle matters: a scrub respects both the registry version and the checking date. Orbit's registry-scrub layer re-validates destinations at campaign time, not against a cached list.
- Who is responsible for compliance if a DNC violation happens?
- The sender — the business originating the campaign. A CPaaS platform supplies the suppression machinery, but the law places registry-scrub responsibility with the entity that places the call or sends the text, which is why registry access, list subscriptions, and campaign-level scrub toggles sit with tenants rather than being default-imposed by the platform.
- Is DNC just for voice calls?
- No — the concept predates SMS but most modern equivalents (and several regulators) read it to cover marketing texts as well, since the recipient harm is the same. Orbit's suppression pipeline applies the same registry and internal opt-out layers across voice and messaging destinations rather than scoping them to one channel.
See also
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