"Quiet hours" and "state calling windows" are usually described as one blurry block — the reason operators guess wrong at the end of the campaign wave. In Devotel Orbit they are two different layers with two different rulebooks. The federal TCPA window (8 AM–9 PM in recipient-local time) is the baseline; the state calling windows are the stricter per-state overlays Orbit intersects with the federal rule before it lets a dial or send go. Getting these two layers right starts with reading the US State Calling Windows reference the same way your compliance counsel reads it: overlay first, federal fallback second.
The difference that matters: federal quiet hours vs state windows
Quiet hours are a recipient-local window rule: the stretch of local clock time during which marketing outreach is blocked (or the tenant chooses to block it). The US federal baseline — the TCPA dialing window 47 U.S.C. § 227(b)(1)(B) as implemented at 47 CFR § 64.1200(c)(1) — gives every US recipient the same 8 AM → 9 PM window, resolved against their timezone.
State calling windows are stricter per-state overlays: a short list of states (currently seven — FL, OK, MS, LA, AL, AR, WV) whose statutes shorten the federal window, ban Sunday dialing, or both. Because federal law expressly does not preempt stricter state law (47 U.S.C. § 227(e)), the binding rule is always the most restrictive of the two. The state-calling-windows page keeps the overlay table small and cites each statute so an audit stays cheap.
The consequence for a tenant is concrete: a Tennessee recipient at 7:45 PM Tuesday is inside the federal window; a Florida recipient at the same clock time is not — the Florida overlay (Fla. Stat. § 501.059) closed Florida's window at 8 PM and bans Sunday outright. Orbit evaluates that intersection per send.
How per-tenant quiet hours defer (not drop)
Quiet hours on the tenant side are an opt-in deferral gate, not an error. When a tenant enables the quiet hours control on a channel (in Settings → Campaign limits or via the quiet-hours endpoints), a send that would land in the blocked stretch does not fail — it defers to the next recipient-local time the recipient-local window reopens, and the response carries next_allowed_at so the caller can schedule the retry deterministically. The default (off) keeps SMS and ad-hoc voice advisory-only so new tenants don't surprise-block themselves.
The same deferral semantics apply to the overlap: if the state overlay tightens the window, the tenant gate defers to the intersected reopening, not the federal one. Deferral is the safe failure mode; dropping is a bug Orbit's gate never commits.
State-window deferral examples — the per-deference math
Florida vs Texas, 8:30 PM Tuesday recipient-local. FL (area code 305 carries an FL overlay) intersects to 8 AM–8 PM, so a 8:30 send defers to 8 AM the following morning, respectfully carrying Fla. Stat. § 501.059 in the error details. TX (no overlay) is inside the federal window and dispatches.
Mississippi, 6:45 PM Wednesday. MS's statute sets a 7:30 PM end but Orbit encodes it conservatively to the hour boundary, so the last permitted dial starts at 6:59 PM; a 7 PM or later send defers to Thursday 8 AM and carries Miss. Code § 77-3-707.
Florida, Sunday all day. The intersected window bans Sunday outright, so any send defers to Monday 8 AM and the reason code reads state_blocked_day — the error is deterministic, the citation is in the payload, and the campaign scheduler can retry around it.
In each case the tenant's preflight comes back allowed: false with next_allowed_at set to the intersected reopening; the campaign never guesses.
How preflight handles the federal-vs-state overlap
Before a campaign batch runs, Orbit's GET /quiet-hours/preview (rooted at /api/v1/compliance/quiet-hours/preview) answers three things per recipient: whether the window is open now, the recipient-local timezone it was resolved against, and the next allowed start if it isn't. The overlap logic that runs at send time runs identically here, so the preview the scheduler reads is the exact window the dialer will enforce.
Preflight also returns the citation-bearing reason field (outside_federal_window, outside_state_window, state_blocked_day), so a campaign rule can branch on "defer" versus "advise and surface for operator review" rather than treating all quiet-hours results as a single opaque no. The Quiet-Hours Checker tool exposes the same recipient-local verdict for an operator punching in a US timezone — no API key, no sign-up, same intersection rules the endpoint runs.
How to read the state-calling-windows reference page
The state-calling-windows page is laid out for counsel, not for marketing. Read it in order:
- Which states carry an overlay — the table of the seven overlay states, each with window, blocked days, statute citation, and the resulting overlap with federal. Anything not in the table falls through to the federal window unchanged.
- How the recipient's state is resolved — the NANP area-code → USPS state mapping, and the deliberate fall-through cases (non-+1 NANP, unmapped area code, or state with no overlay) where the federal window applies.
- Where the block is enforced — the two-path split: ad-hoc voice is advisory until the tenant opts in, while campaign/dialer voice is always hard-blocked against the federal window (tenant controls only ever add on top; nothing relaxes the federal block). The same split decides whether a state's overlay is advisory or enforced.
- Verification and re-verification — every entry's statute citation so counsel can audit before a commercial campaign.
The page's worked example (a Sunday Florida dial vs a Texas one) is the template for your own scenario table: pick the recipient's area code, intersect, and hand the deferral to the scheduler.
Frequently asked questions
What is the TCPA federal window?
The Telephone Consumer Protection Act's dialing window is 8 AM–9 PM in the recipient's local time (47 U.S.C. § 227(b)(1)(B), 47 CFR § 64.1200(c)(1)) — the baseline every US outbound rule starts from.
How do state windows differ from the federal window?
Seven states (FL, OK, MS, LA, AL, AR, WV) run "mini-TCPA" statutes with tighter hours or Sunday bans. Because federal law does not preempt stricter state law (47 U.S.C. § 227(e)), the binding rule is the intersection, and Orbit's overlay engine computes that per send and annotates the result with the statute citation.
Does quiet-hours deferral drop traffic?
No. The tenant-side gate defers the send to the next recipient-local window opening and reports next_allowed_at; the send is held, not discarded. Dropping is a failure mode the gate never commits.
How does preflight handle federal + state overlap?
GET /quiet-hours/preview evaluates the same intersection at preview time as at send time, returning allowed, the recipient timezone, and next_allowed_at, with a reason code that distinguishes outside_federal_window from outside_state_window and state_blocked_day.
Where does the state-calling-windows page come in?
It is the source of truth for which states carry overlays, how a recipient's state is resolved from the NANP area code, and which enforcement path (ad-hoc vs campaign) the block rides on — the page a tenant reads before touching the tenant opt-in gate.