Devoted to the call center industry, the agents on the phones, and their managers

Geoff Williams of Entrepreneur.com lists telemarketing as one of 10 Businesses Facing Extinction in 10 Years. Others industries he says are on their way out include payphones, gay bars, used bookstores, newspapers, and crop dusters.

Williams doesn't actually claim that telemarketing will become extinct.  In ten years, he says, "They'll be here. Humbled, more impotent, but probably still here." Like any intrusive form of communications, including advertising, telemarketing becomes less effective over time. And with the millions on Do Not Call lists, the number of people who can legally be called by telemarketers has drastically dwindled. (It's still legal to call people with whom your company has an existing relationship. And of course, the US Congress exempted political calls from the regulations. Naturally.)

So telemarketers are finding new ways to add people to their lists legally, including raffles at the mall (Win A Vacation and Many Phone Calls) and anything else they can do to get permission to call people.

When the Do Not Call list was first established five years ago, many people assumed their number would be permanently removed from telemarketing lists. Not so. You have to re-register every five years. That means the first wave of people who signed up on the list are about to start getting calls again. Fortunately, it's simple and free to sign up again at donotcall.gov.

And let me take the opportunity to dispel the urban legend that telemarketers are about to hit the phones armed with massive lists of every cell phone number in the US. It's not going to happen that way. First, because there isn't any such massive list. If you want your cellphone to be listed in Directory Assistance, good luck. Second, because telemarketers depend on automated dialers, which are illegal to use when calling cellphones.