In August 2026 the regulator reported AED 19 million in fines and 9,433 phone numbers disconnected for telemarketing violations. Those are not warnings. A disconnected number is a contact centre that stopped working that morning.
The telemarketing regulations came into full effect in August 2024, and most of what they require is operational rather than legal. Your lawyer cannot make you compliant. Your phone system configuration can.
What the rules actually require
Approval before you dial. A company must hold prior approval from the TDRA before conducting telemarketing at all. This is not a filing you do afterwards.
Local numbers only. Marketing calls must be made from local numbers registered under the company's own commercial licence. An overseas dialler or a borrowed trunk is a violation on its face.
A nine-to-six window. Calls are permitted between 9am and 6pm. Outside that window, do not dial.
One refusal ends it. If a consumer rejects the offer on the first contact, following up is prohibited. There is no second attempt, no different agent, no callback next quarter.
No pressure tactics. The regulation names this directly.
Records, and reports. Companies must keep detailed records of marketing calls and submit regular reports to the authorities.
Which of these your phone system should be enforcing
Four of the six are configuration, not training. Relying on agents to remember them is how companies end up in the enforcement figures.
| Requirement | Where it should live |
|---|---|
| Nine-to-six window | Time-based routing on the outbound campaign, so the dialler cannot place a call outside the window at all |
| Local registered numbers | Outbound caller ID pinned per campaign, with no agent override |
| One refusal ends it | A disposition code that writes the number to a suppression list the dialler reads before every attempt |
| Records and reports | Call recording plus CDR retention, exportable in a form a regulator will accept |
The remaining two, approval and pressure tactics, are a licence and a training matter respectively.
The part most companies get wrong
The Do Not Call Registry is not a one-time import. Numbers are added to it continuously, by residents, at any time. A list you scrubbed in January is not a list you can dial in June.
Whatever process you use, it has to answer one question on every attempt: is this number on the register today. If your answer involves a spreadsheet somebody downloads monthly, that is the gap the fines come through.
What this has to do with your phone system
Everything, and that is the uncomfortable part. Most contact centres in this market were configured before August 2024 and have not been touched since. Time windows, caller ID pinning, suppression lists and retention are all things a properly configured system does without anyone thinking about it, and all things an old system happily ignores.
If you are not certain which of the four your setup enforces today, that is the audit worth doing before someone else does it for you.