(Direct Newsline)—The Federal Trade Commission will not automatically delete telephone numbers from its do-not-call list, despite a provision that calls for numbers to be eliminated five years after enrollment.

In testimony before a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee on Tuesday, the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection director Lydia Parnes said "the Commission now commits that it will not drop any telephone number from the Registry based on the five-year period pending final Congressional or agency action on whether to make registration permanent."

Parnes's testimony, to the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection of the Energy and Commerce Committee, made mention of the Do Not Call (DNC) Re-Authorization Act, which is under consideration by Congress. According to the American Teleservices Association (ATA), Parnes said she would not remove any names from the registry until Congress passes a bill to make the DNC Registry permanent, or until the FTC passes a ruling on the topic.

The ATA indicated it would support a permanent registry, provided it is appropriately in a timely and complete fashion.

"We would encourage the FTC or Congress to require phone companies to provide a record of all disconnected numbers so they can be removed from the DNC making the list more accurate," said ATA CEO Tim Searcy, in a statement. "Until that happens, we support the extension of the current list."

Searcy continued, "Consumers telephone numbers change at a high frequency every year, and, currently, phone numbers are only removed when they are reassigned to someone not on the DNC Registry. If the phone numbers are disconnected, they remain on the Registry. Currently, the DNC Registry is set on a 5-year cycle, expiring after 5 years to allow the FTC to properly cleanse the registry and to provide consumers the opportunity to reconsider their registration."

The federal registry was launched in June 2003, and the first numbers were due to drop off in June 2008. The five-year purging was intended to rid the registry of disconnected or reassigned numbers. The registry currently contains more than 145 million phone numbers.

As part of its justification for reconsidering the purge policy, the FTC cited the increased use of cell phones and greater instances of number portability. Additionally, the registry has implemented a scrubbing program that rids it of disconnected and reassigned numbers on a monthly basis.