Date: Sat, 26 Dec 92 08:56:54 PST
From: howard@hal.com (Howard Gayle)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: No Caller-ID in California
Reply-To: howard@hal.com
Organization: TELECOM Digest
X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 12, Issue 920, Message 6 of 11

In article <telecom12.916.2@eecs.nwu.edu>, john@zygot (John Higdon)
writes:

> The two major stumbling blocks are the requirement for per-line
> blocking (and the correlary requirement that ALL unlisted numbers be
> blocked by default), and the stringent customer notification and
> education that Pac*Bell would have to provide in advance of the
> offering. Pacific Bell indicated that since forty percent of
> residences in California have unlisted numbers, any Caller-ID offering
> would be of little value to potential users.

This is strategic bargaining between the PUC and Pac Bell.  The PUC
made a political decision.  Those 40% of residential subscribers have
non-pub to protect their privacy. The PUC calculates that most of
those subscribers would see calling number delivery (CND) as invading
that privacy.  (It's irrelevant here whether CND really increases or
decreases privacy; only perceptions count.)  Those 40% aren't selected
at random, either: those with non-pub tend to be richer and more
powerful than those with published numbers.

Pac Bell calculates that having non-pub lines default to block CND
would be a lot less profitable than having them default to deliver the
number.  That's because they assume that most people won't change the
default, whatever it is.  They also assume that most people won't dial
per-call blocking or unblocking codes.  Pac Bell calculates that most
of the profit from CND will come from businesses, but only if those
businesses get a shot at collecting the non-pub numbers of those
richer subscribers.  Few, if any, businesses can afford to use blocked
number call blocking, i.e. refuse to answer calls from potential
customers.  Businesses can get 800 numbers with ANI; more may do so if
they can't get CND, especially as ISDN prices come down.

At this point it's worth remembering that most residential subscribers
are *not* like most TELECOM Digest readers.  Most residential
subscribers, even the ones with non-pub, do not currently plan to get
CND.  They don't think about per-line and per-call blocking.  They
don't know about ANI.  They just pick up the phone and dial.

As for "the stringent customer notification and education," this would
likely turn out to be a billing insert, a few ads, and an 800 number,
all ordered by the PUC and thus funded by us subscribers.  And does
anyone believe that it would take three years to deploy the software
to do per-line blocking, whatever the default?

This whole mess is the result of using politicians to make decisions
that ought to be made by a free market.

> [Moderator's Note: If PacBell wants to make an end-run around the PUC,
> all they need to do is implement Blocked Number Call Blocking, and
> educate their caller ID subscribers on how to automatically reject
> calls from unidentified parties. When that forty percent with non-pub
> numbers found out that fifty percent of the other subsribers were
> refusing their calls, they'd soon ask for their number to start being
> displayed by default also.  PAT]

If 50% of subscribers wanted CND without default per-line blocking of
non-pub numbers, then they wouldn't have to use blocked number call
blocking (for some number of dollars a month), they'd just have to
make one call to the PUC.  Hell, if 50% of subscribers phoned the PUC
and said they wanted all phone numbers to spell the names of Tolkien
characters then that's what the PUC would order.