Professor Phone Buster

Nov. 28, 2009

This is from the man I call Prof. Phone Buster.

ATT offers a great service - for a fee - which can be turned on in 4 hours. It's a form of mandatory caller identification.

Normally, a caller's telephone number and name is displayed on your caller ID when an incoming call is received. However, numerous callers suppress this information for a variety of reasons. I find these incoming calls to be incredibly annoying. This service forces the caller to provide you with their telephone number to be displayed on your caller ID - or the call will be diverted to an automated service, which requires them to record their name if they wish to reach you. This service also includes the basic caller ID feature which will display the call on telephones so equipped. They cost $25 at Radio Shack.

People who block their caller ID information will not be able to get through to you (your phone won't even ring) unless they disclose their name to the central system - which then calls you and plays a recording of the person's name - and an option to connect the call if you press the "1" key. This pretty much eliminates wrong numbers, crank calls, unsolicited sales calls and anyone else who doesn't want to reveal their identity to you. It puts you back in control of the incoming call.

Optionally, you can set this mandatory network caller ID feature to simply reject all calls to your telephone number which don't provide you with their unblocked caller ID information. A person with an anonymous number who calls you will hear a standard recording: "the party you have called does not accept unidentified calls. If you wish to reach this party, please hang up, and re-place the call first dialing *82 to unblock your caller ID information. Thank you". I use this feature on my main number, which I've had for 20+ years from ATT. I love it.

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