Can I (or you) send this to comp.decom.telecom and comp.risks? If true, this merits wider distribution, but I don't want to cause you any trouble. Then again, I don't see your email address... -rich Ryan, Russell/SYBASE wrote:
Here's something cute:
Yesterday PacBell turned on ANI on our trunk groups, for local area calls. On their own, mind you, without request from us. If you call anyone here with a display phone, it displays your number, even if you have caller-id blocking on or you do a *70 (for those who don't know, ANI is not caller-id, you can't block your number from being displayed with ANI.)
It also grabs your phone number if you leave a voice mail, so even folks without display phones can benefit.
I post this thinking it may be of interest. I actually disagree that people ought to be able to block their number. My feeling is that if someone is calling me, they have no right be anonymous. Of course, I realize that this is easy to defeat with call forwarding and such.. In fact, if I call you from my work phone..you won't see my direct dial number...you'll see a number for PacBell's trunk group.
Now...I just have to figure out how PacBell is charging us.. if it's .01$ per call like regular ANI...at 100,000 calls per day.. Hmm...first fix is free? A new PacBell marketing program? Our CIO loves the new "feature."
Ryan