David Duffy wrote:

> Wow, Telecom New Zealand are a bunch of bloody cheapskates aren't
> they?  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.

  More likely the billing aspect!

> It's a variant on the US system. AFAIK, it will be a free service like
> Easycall,etc.

  Then you have not read ANY of the literature which came to your
mailbox.  It costs by the month.  Easycall is free?  You jest.  One and
one only "easycall" feature is free to domestic users; "call waiting".
Call diversion is "free" to pensioners.

  As the man from Telstra explained, these are "free" for a perfectly
obvious reason; they generate Telstra revenue.  A call that finds you
busy is not charged for so it does not generate revenue.  If however you
are acquainted of it and answer it, it IS charged for.  Voil‡!  Call
waiting is free!  A call when you are not at home is not charged.  If
however you have arranged to divert it, not only is it charged to the
originator, but you are charged a call fee for the diversion as well.

  All other facilities, such as enquiry calls (hold the person you are
talking to and call another to query a detail) and conference calls, do
not make extra revenue for the provider since you would make the call
anyway.  In fact, they allow you to get the task done in fewer calls as
you do not need to call back after the enquiry/ conference.  Ergo, you
must pay extra rent for them (in case you don't actually use them
much!).

  And of course, since the exchange equipment is provided already for
these facilities on all lines already (AXE series, though caller-ID and
public-phone comms are only built-in on the latest/ current line
equipment), the cost to the provider to provide any of these services
is exactly zero.

> Silent numbers will not transmit their ID by default although normal
> ones will.

  Except to operators of course!

> 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.

  A nice exercise, but since virtually all commercial systems cost less
than a years subscription to the service, this will definitely be just
for the fun of it!  If it wasn't for the cost, I would love to have an
adapter for the PC.  This could be used with a phone number database, if
you could obtain one, that is.  I went and bought a CD retail, only to
find that I hadn't bought a usable product, you had to pledge your
plastic to "register" it and get a key!

> Hope this sheds some light on the situation.

  So do I.

  I must say that one of the most necessary functions on a caller-ID
unit will be the control to prevent the phone ringing in the first place
unless an ID not in a "hit-list" is detected.  Note carefully how I
phrased that!

  Cheers,
        Paul B.