Federal Trade Commission commissioners voted unanimously 5-0 last week to require that telemarketers update or "scrub" their Do Not Call Registry list every 31 days instead of quarterly.

That reduces from three months to 31 days the amount of time a consumer must wait after entering his or her telephone number on the Do Not Call Registry to complain about a company the consumer believes is violating the law.

The FTC says nearly 58.5 million phone numbers have been placed on the Do Not Call Registry which opened on Oct. 1 2003. The FTC expects at least 60 million to eventually sign up.

The federal registry allows anyone to include their telephone number on a list that's sold to telemarketers, most of whom must then not call those numbers for five years. Exempted are charities, pollsters and political campaign callers, as well as companies that have recently done business with someone on the list. Violators can be fined $11,000 for each illegal call.

Anyone can relist their telephone numbers with the registry at the end of five years.

For now, the FTC ruling, effective Jan. 1, 2005, only applies to interstate telemarketers -- those who make calls outside the originating state -- but the Federal Communications Commission, which enforces Do Not Call regulations for intrastate calls, will likely make the same amendment to its rules for the sake of uniformity.

The FTC says telemarketers are largely complying with the Do Not Call regulations and it issued citations, but not fines, to only eight companies, at least seven of them to mortgage finance firms.

Consumers say they are otherwise satisfied with the new law.

Two recent surveys, a Harris Interactive poll and an Associated Press-Ipsos poll, both say the majority of consumers who signed up with the Do Not Call Registry now experience far fewer telemarketing calls.

The Do Not Call Registry law also received the blessings of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver when it ruled Feb. 17 that telemarketers do not have a First Amendment right to call consumers with sales pitches when that right supersedes consumers' right to privacy, invoked after they've indicated they don't want to be phone pitched.

Published: April 1, 2004

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A journalist for 35-years, Broderick Perkins parlayed an old-school daily newspaper career into a digital news service offering editorial content and consulting services. Perkins' San Jose, CA-based DeadlineNews Group includes the flagship news site, DeadlineNews.Com, offering real estate, personal finance and consumer journalism, and a backshop, the Deadline Newsroom.