VoIP and Google Voice Numbers in TCPA Cases: Is the Number Covered?

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act reaches “any service for which the called party is charged for the call.” Those words matter whenever a plaintiff’s number runs on VoIP or Google Voice. Those numbers aren’t automatically covered. For the cell-phone claim over autodialed or prerecorded calls, it has to be cellular service or a line whose user is actually charged for the call. For Do Not Call claims, the subscriber has to be residential. The plaintiff has to prove those facts, often from the provider’s own records.

Why does the type of phone line matter in a TCPA case?

Because the statute protects specific kinds of lines, not every phone number. An autodialer is equipment that can store or produce numbers using a random or sequential number generator and dial them, and a prerecorded call plays an artificial or recorded voice. The claim for those calls reaches calls to “any telephone number assigned to a paging service, cellular telephone service,” a few radio services, “or any service for which the called party is charged for the call,” under 47 U.S.C. § 227(b)(1)(A)(iii). A separate clause covers prerecorded calls to residential lines. The Do Not Call provisions protect “residential telephone subscribers” under § 227(c).

VoIP (voice over internet protocol) service moves calls over an internet connection. Congress wrote the TCPA in 1991, and the provisions that define the protected lines don’t mention it. That gap shows up in three places: whether a VoIP line is cellular service, whether it’s a line that charges for calls, and whether its user is a residential subscriber.

Is a VoIP number “cellular telephone service”?

Not on its own, in the decisions discussed here. A service that also routes calls over a cellular network is different. The leading appellate decision is Breda v. Cellco Partnership, decided by the First Circuit in 2019. The plaintiff’s carrier sent calls over Wi-Fi when her phone was connected and over a cellular network when it wasn’t. The court concluded that “Breda’s hybrid service is meaningfully distinguishable from exclusive VoIP service” and held that her number was assigned to a cellular telephone service.

An app that only works over Wi-Fi is a different case. In Baemmert v. Credit One Bank, a Wisconsin federal court found no evidence “that TextMe actually uses any cellular technology” and concluded that the calls “were not made to a number assigned to a cellular service.”

I’d treat the routing question as a discovery issue, not a pleading assumption. A plaintiff who says “cell phone” may be using an app number that never touches a cellular network, and the label in a complaint tells you less than the provider’s records will.

When is a VoIP or Google Voice line “charged for the call”?

When the user is actually charged for the call. Per-call billing is the clearest case, and the cases below turn on whether a charge was shown or alleged.

In Klein v. Commerce Energy, a Pennsylvania federal court granted summary judgment to the defendants over calls to a Google Voice number. The court noted, “Klein does not dispute that he was not charged by Google for his VoIP service and that the service to him is free.” The plaintiff argued that the calls cost him because he forwarded them to a cell phone plan he paid for. The court held that forwarding “does not mean the VoIP number constitutes or is rendered a number assigned to a cellular telephone service,” and it found no evidence of a charge for any call. The court left open that a charge on the “front end,” such as minutes drawn from a bundle, might qualify.

Per-call billing comes out the other way. The Baemmert court held that “If a VoIP service charges on a per-call basis, that service falls under the broad statutory language” of the charged-call clause. On a record with no genuine dispute that the app charged the plaintiff credits for the calls, the court granted him summary judgment on liability. In Perrong v. Victory Phones, an Eastern District of Pennsylvania judge held in July 2021 that allegations of a VoIP plan with a per-call “ring charge” stated a claim, because the statute “does not contain a ‘de minimis’ charge below which a plaintiff cannot state a claim.”

I think the billing records are the case. A free app, or a forwarding setup with no charge for the calls, leaves the plaintiff without the charged-call theory, though a cellular theory may still be available. A flat-fee plan is weaker ground for the plaintiff than per-call billing, but read the plan terms before relying on it.

Can a VoIP number support a Do Not Call claim?

Sometimes. One 2025 decision let a VoIP-based claim past the pleading stage. The FCC’s rule bars telephone solicitations to a “residential telephone subscriber who has registered his or her telephone number on the national do-not-call registry,” under 47 C.F.R. § 64.1200(c)(2). The National Do Not Call Registry is the federal list of numbers whose owners don’t want telemarketing calls. The rule’s extension to telemarketing “calls or text messages to wireless telephone numbers” in § 64.1200(e) says nothing about VoIP.

The FCC’s 2003 order said the agency would “presume wireless subscribers who ask to be put on the national do-not-call list” to be residential, adding that the presumption “may require a complaining wireless subscriber to provide further proof of the validity of that presumption should we need to take enforcement action,” according to FCC 03-153 ¶ 36. That presumption was written for wireless subscribers. After the Supreme Court’s June 2025 decision in McLaughlin Chiropractic Associates v. McKesson Corp., district courts “must determine the meaning of the law under ordinary principles of statutory interpretation,” giving the FCC’s views respect but not binding effect.

In August, denying a motion to dismiss, a Michigan federal court in Dobronski v. CHW Group considered a plaintiff whose “residential lines are provided over Voice Over Internet Protocol” technology and held that “Because Plaintiff’s numbers are on the DNC Registry, Plaintiff is entitled to the FCC’s presumption of residential telephone subscriber.” In September, a North Carolina federal court in Newman v. SGMS, Inc. observed that “The Fourth Circuit has not addressed whether cell phone or VOIP owners are considered” residential subscribers, and it assumed, for the motion to dismiss only, that the plaintiff’s cell number was residential.

My view: a defendant should press the residential element at every stage, and build the record for it early. The FCC itself said the residential question for a wireless subscriber “may be more fact-intensive” than for a landline in FCC 03-153, and in my view it comes down to facts (how many lines the plaintiff keeps, what they use each one for, whether the number is listed for a business), and those come out in discovery.

How do plaintiffs plead VoIP and forwarding numbers?

They plead the type of service and the charge. The first amended complaint in Victory Phones alleged a ring charge and a per-minute charge for each call, but it didn’t say what kind of line the plaintiff had, and the court dismissed it with leave to amend. “He vaguely asserts he has a telephone number,” the court wrote in its February 2021 opinion. The second amended complaint added that the number was a VoIP line with those charges, and it survived.

Expect allegations like the ones in the second amended complaint the July 2021 Victory Phones opinion describes: the number is “assigned to a VoIP service,” and the provider charged the plaintiff for the call in question. Forwarding is the variation to watch. A plaintiff who forwards a free Google Voice number to a paid cell phone may plead that the forwarded calls cost money, but Klein held that forwarding doesn’t turn the VoIP number into a cellular one, and the plaintiff still had to show a charge for the calls. Our earlier post covers the pleading defects that end TCPA cases early.

There’s a residential-line wrinkle too. Victory Phones argued that the plaintiff’s VoIP line was a residential line, which would bring in the FCC’s exemptions for certain prerecorded calls to homes. At the pleading stage, the court rejected that, reasoning in part that the plaintiff “did not plead that the subject number was associated with a physical traditional telephone line.” Those exemptions for prerecorded calls to landlines are covered in a separate post.

What carrier evidence proves the line type?

Records from the company that actually serves the number, not a database label. In Breda, the defendant relied on a Neustar listing that showed the plaintiff’s number as “wireline.” The First Circuit held that “the fact that Neustar is a tool that can assist compliance with the TCPA does not mean that Neustar listings are dispositive,” and it added, in the same opinion, that “the Neustar listings do not appear to provide any information as to whether a given telephone number is associated with a plan under which the called party is charged for incoming calls.”

The same limits apply to the other industry sources. The Local Exchange Routing Guide (LERG) shows the carrier that originally holds a block of numbers, and porting data shows the carrier serving a number now. Neither shows how the subscriber is billed or whether the last leg of a call runs over Wi-Fi or a cellular network, which is what Breda turned on. Porting matters for another reason too. For the autodialed and prerecorded call claim only (not Do Not Call claims), the FCC’s rule shields a voice call to a number recently ported from landline to wireless service if the caller didn’t know the number was wireless, the number isn’t on the national or the caller’s own do-not-call list, and the call is “made within 15 days of the porting of the number from wireline to wireless service,” under § 64.1200(a)(1)(iv).

The practical move is to subpoena the VoIP provider early and ask for the plan terms and the billing entries for each call. In Baemmert, the bank’s evidence from the app provider that the plaintiff wasn’t charged came too late. The court noted that “Credit One did not subpoena TextMe until April 10, 2017,” found the bank hadn’t been diligent, and refused to consider the evidence, according to the October 2017 order.

How does VoIP use affect standing and class definitions?

On standing, timing matters. The July 2021 opinion in Victory Phones rejected an argument that a frequent plaintiff fell outside the statute’s protection, calling the case defendants usually cite for that defense, in which a plaintiff bought at least 35 cell phones to bring TCPA suits, “the narrow exception to TCPA statutory standing.” The court relied on the plaintiff’s sworn statement that he didn’t keep numbers to bring lawsuits and on the absence of discovery. I’d build a professional-plaintiff standing challenge on discovery about why the plaintiff got and kept the number. The decision that accepted the defense came at summary judgment, as Victory Phones pointed out.

Class definitions are where VoIP numbers do the most work for a defense. In a Washington robocall class action, plaintiffs ran 8,861 numbers through an online database and concluded that only 5,784 were landlines “rather than VoIP or cell phones,” according to the May 2016 order in Booth v. Appstack, though the court described that method only as background. If a class of cellular numbers includes VoIP numbers, membership for those numbers may depend on each person’s routing or billing plan. That’s an individual question, and it belongs in the predominance argument.

McLaughlin itself began as a technology-and-class problem. The district court there certified a class “drawing no distinction between faxes received on traditional fax machines and faxes received through online fax services,” according to the Supreme Court’s opinion. We’ve written separately about testing a plaintiff’s data expert under Rule 702.

How the line type changes the claims

What to do when a VoIP number is in the complaint

1. Put a litigation hold on the call and text logs for the number, including dialer and platform data and the consent records.
2. Pull every opt-out request and internal do-not-call entry for the number, with dates.
3. Pull the Registry scrub files and the version dates your team or vendor used.
4. Collect the vendor and lead-source contracts and scripts, plus any recorded or AI-voice message files and any line-type lookups your vendors ran.
5. Talk to a lawyer before you respond to a demand letter, contact the claimant, or offer anything to settle.

When a claim involving prerecorded calls and Do Not Call compliance is filed as a proposed class action, the firm’s page on defending TCPA class actions in California covers what comes next.

Questions businesses ask about VoIP numbers and the TCPA

Is a Google Voice number a cell phone under the TCPA?

Not by itself. In Klein, the court found no charge for calls to a free Google Voice number and ruled for the defendants. It also held that forwarding the number to a paid cell phone didn’t make it a cellular number, so the plaintiff still had to show a charge for the calls themselves.

Does a flat-rate VoIP plan count as being charged for the call?

Usually that’s the defense’s better argument. The Victory Phones court said a call through a flat-fee or unlimited VoIP plan wouldn’t fall under the charged-call clause, though Klein left open that minutes drawn from a bundle might count. A plaintiff with a true flat-rate plan needs another theory, such as showing that the service is cellular, which depends on how the provider routes calls, not on what the plaintiff calls the phone.

Does registering a VoIP number on the Do Not Call Registry make it residential?

Not automatically. The Registry protects residential subscribers, and the FCC’s 2003 presumption of residential status was written for wireless subscribers. The Michigan court in Dobronski applied it to VoIP lines at the pleading stage. Whether a particular line is residential usually depends on facts the company can test in discovery.

Should we remove VoIP numbers from our calling lists?

Not as a rule. Treating VoIP numbers like cell phones for consent and Do Not Call purposes is the safer default, since a plaintiff may later prove a charge or cellular routing. These defenses work in litigation, not as a calling strategy.

If your company is defending a VoIP-number claim

If your company has been sued over calls or texts to a VoIP or Google Voice number, the plaintiff’s billing records and the provider’s routing data often decide whether the claim survives. Rosenberger + Kawabata represents businesses defending TCPA lawsuits and class actions through its business litigation practice, including claims involving prerecorded calls and Do Not Call compliance. Contact Rosenberger + Kawabata online for a free and confidential consultation, or call (310) 894-6921.

Sources

The statute is the Telephone Consumer Protection Act at 47 U.S.C. § 227. The FCC’s rules are at 47 C.F.R. § 64.1200, as published in the eCFR through October 22, 2025. The FCC’s 2003 order is FCC 03-153, 18 FCC Rcd 14014 (2003).

The court decisions are McLaughlin Chiropractic Associates, Inc. v. McKesson Corp., No. 23-1226 (U.S. June 20, 2025); Breda v. Cellco Partnership, 934 F.3d 1 (1st Cir. 2019); Klein v. Commerce Energy, Inc., 256 F. Supp. 3d 563 (W.D. Pa. 2017); Baemmert v. Credit One Bank, N.A., 271 F. Supp. 3d 1043 (W.D. Wis. 2017), and its October 24, 2017 order; Perrong v. Victory Phones LLC, No. 20-5317 (E.D. Pa. July 15, 2021), and its February 11, 2021 opinion; Dobronski v. CHW Group, Inc., No. 2:24-cv-11649 (E.D. Mich. Aug. 21, 2025); Newman v. SGMS, Inc., No. 3:25-cv-00042 (W.D.N.C. Sept. 2, 2025); and Booth v. Appstack, Inc., No. C13-1533JLR (W.D. Wash. May 24, 2016).

This post is general information about the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and related laws as of October 22, 2025. It is not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Courts and the FCC change the rules in this area often, and the outcome of any claim depends on its facts. Past results do not guarantee future outcomes.