Funny thread!
We were doing "dialers" before that term got spread across the net and also remember dealing with what is now NCC when they were thinking about entering the dialer biz.
Dialers made one hell of a lot of money in earlier years and even I made a good few million out of them at that time. Another friend made loads more.. around $12m in 12 months, tho a large proportion of that was from audiotext lines - phone sex for those with nada clue :-)
Since then, scammers, con artists, wannabee dialer dealers, fraudulent phone/audiotext companies and who knows what other scum ripped the public off to a degree that forced government regulatory bodies to impose restrictions for consumer protection. In the process, this screwed the dialer market and the main phone companies developed an anti.
The same scammers and con artists also ripped loads of webmasters off and never paid.
If any "dialer dealer" comes up with a product and wants to deal - I'd want to know who the fuck he or she is, where they bank, and what credibility they have - then check the dialer for a load of viruses and bullshit :-)