>From: Andre Lategan <andre.lategan@APAC.DMR.COM.AU>
>Subject: Re: FSK CALLER ID Receiver, Need help!
>
>I am just curious about Caller ID.
>
>Telecom New Zealand recently introduced Caller ID.  They are selling the
Caller
>ID attachment AND charging a monthly rental for connection to Caller ID.  I
>wonder if this isn't just a spoof and they are actually sending the Caller
info
>down everyones' telephone line anyway, whether or not you actually pay for
it?
>
>Has anyone any knowledge of this?

>Wow, Telecom New Zealand are a bunch of bloody cheapskates aren't they ?
Yes - but we have free local phone calls and you don't.......  :-)

>In Australia, Telstra was due to begin caller-ID 1st dec '97 but has delayed
>it a bit due to some end user concerns about the privacy aspect of it. It's a
>variant on the US system. AFAIK, it will be a free service like Easycall,etc.
>Silent numbers will not transmit their ID by default although normal ones
>will.
>Anyone will be able to disable/enable this on a call-by-call basis and it
>won't
>be passed on by exchanges when the originating mode is unknown. The caller ID
>decoders,etc are already on sale from around AU$39.95 upwards. It should be
>fairly easy to decode the data (transmitted between 1st & 2nd rings) with a
>good old fsk decoder chip & a Pic. Hope this sheds some light on the
>situation.
>Regards...
_


We also had a bit of a flurry about privacy here and this delayed Caller ID.
Then they decided it was OK and went ahead.  New Zealand is the first country
in the world (As far as I know) to have a Privacy law, so if its OK for us, it
likely to be OK for you too.  Our Privacy Act is very strict and has had some
ridiculous interpretations - like when one school refusedf to give the parents
their children's report cards because that would invade the privacy of the
children!  That took a bit to sort out.

The Privacy Act is actually a lot of hogwash.  I work in the computer
consulting industry and have a fair amount of knowledge about linking of
government and business computer systems.  Your life's affairs are easily
available to many separate organisations.

Andre___________