The FTC plans a consumer education campaign to alert consumers that they will need to reapply to stay on the do- not-call registry, FTC Consumer Protection Bureau Director Lydia Parnes told Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., who chaired a Senate panel on his bill S-781 Tuesday. Pryor told Parnes it's urgent the FTC ensure that consumers understand they the need to sign up again for the registry, which expires next summer. Pryor's bill, set for committee markup Thursday, would reauthorize the registry.

Many people who signed up for the registry when it began in 2003 will start to fall off the list, Parnes acknowledged under questioning by Pryor. He asked Parnes to provide an estimate of the number of people who could be affected and to outline her plans for consumer education efforts. Seniors group AARP also plans to begin notifying its members of the impending list expirations, said Richard Johnson, an AARP board member. "We're always in favor of more education," he told Pryor.

Despite the registry's success, more can be done to protect consumers, Johnson said. The AARP recommends that the Commission prohibit all unsolicited prerecorded telemarketing calls, including those to people already customers of a calling company, and Johnson said the FTC should help them avoid other unwanted marketing calls as well. The group strongly believes that business should continue to finance the registry, he added.

Congress should also urge the Commission to deal with other problems such as the "predictive dialing techniques" telemarketers use in which they call more than one person at the same time, Johnson said. They speak to one person and drop the call to talk to others who pick up, resulting in dead air or a click for the first recipient. "For mid-life and older Americans, these calls are more than just a nuisance," Johnson said. The calls create uncertainty, particularly for people who live alone. AARP suggests that companies that abandon calls should be required to provide identifying information to consumers to remove uncertainties.

Praising the success of the do-not-call registry, Parnes said nearly 146 million people have signed up. She recommended that Congress consider strengthening the registry financially by making it a statutory requirement that telemarketers pay fees for access to the registry. The Commission now must issue regulations setting the amount of the fees, which it does yearly. "A stable fee structure would benefit telemarketers, sellers and service providers who access the registry," Parnes said. She said the fees should be high enough to cover costs of enforcement, a position that the industry opposes.

Fees for accessing the registry should be capped, said Jerry Cerasale, senior vice president of the Direct Marketing Association's government affairs division. He said the charges are higher than necessary to administer the list. Fees for a telemarketer to access the registry have been increased year after year, he said, with 2006 fees set at $17,050, up 11 percent from $15,400. Cerasale also complained that 30 to 40 percent of the registry's phone numbers are inaccurate. To fix the problem, he suggested that phone numbers consumers give up should be removed from the registry as soon as they are dropped, before they are reassigned.