Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1992 21:42:52 -0700
From: rickie@trickie.ualberta.ca (Richard Nash)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Privacy Has an Ed Tel Price-Tag
Organization: TELECOM Digest
X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 12, Issue 862, Message 2 of 8

 From the {Edmonton Sun}, Nov 18, 1992 Comment section page 11
By Sun columnist Donna Marie Artuso

Selective Call Blocking (SCB) seem to be the very latest in a series of 
wondrous developments that have delivered us from the days of black,
rotary dial telephones and party lines (ah, the good old days) into
the era of touch-tone phones that look like Mickey Mouse, take your
messages and forward calls to anywhere in the world.

SCB allows telephone customers to prevent their number from being
known by people who subscribe to another technological wonder, the
Call Display feature.

It is particularly desirable for folks with security concerns. For
example, victims of family violence who are in hiding from their
attackers, and medical professionals who wish to keep their numbers
confidential from the patients they counsel after hours - by phone
from their homes.

         C O N C E R N S  A B O U T   P R I V A C Y
 
Consumer groups too, have voiced concerns about the right to privacy
of seniors and other shut-ins who shop by phone.

Yesterday, Ed Tel president and CEO R.H. David appeared at a meeting
of the city's utilities and public works committee in support of Ed
Tel's request to extend the SCB service for the not-so-modest service
charge of $17.70 per customer.

Perhaps recognizing that many people who need SCB might not be able to
afford the fee, David did allow that it would be provided free of
charge whenever there was demonstrable need, such as when an
individual has a restraining order against someone who has threatened
them from the past.

Ed Tel's fee-for-service rationale also included some reference to a
"deterrent" factor which led David to distinguish between "legitimate"
requests for SCB and requests from abusers, or those thousands of
people who, every year, get on the horn to make threatening and
obscene calls.

It was an especially weak argument considering that such wierdos are
now far easier to detect, thanks to a technology known as Call Trace
which is available to everyone free of charge.

Abusers, who have their calls connected by the 411 service, can now
also be traced quite readily.

Besides, if $17.70 was going to deter anyone from making an obscene
phone call, we'd have licked the problem a long time ago.

It was Ald. Tooker Gomberg who raised the subject of other telephone
companies and their SCB strategies.

He should be interested to know that AGT supplies Selective Call
Blocking to any customer who asks for it, absolutely free of charge.

Explains AGT product manager and spokesman Laurie Schultz: "We didn't
want to have to make privacy decisions for our customers. We didn't
want to have to play the role of judge and jury and decide who had a
good reason for getting it free and who didn't."

AGT was the first company in Canada to introduce call display and call
blocking.  They were first tested in Red Deer in 1990.

         R e s p o n s e   t o  R e s i s t a n c e 

Says Schultz: "Like all telephone companies, we were new to privacy
impacts.  But we found there was some resistance to call display, so
we minimized it by providing call block for free."

As is the usual proceedure in these matters, Ed Tel's request will be
considered by city counsil at its next full meeting.

There, aldermen will have to decide whether or not their constituents
will have to pay for the privacy that, arguably, is their right.

Charging for SCB, of course, would have the effect of raking in a
little more dough for the city-owned corporation which last year
reported a net profit of $270 million.

It sure sounds as though Ed Tel has someything to learn from its
country cousins at AGT.

And on Monday, city manage Richard Picherack revealed that he was
eyeing Ed Tel's cash reserves to help retire the city's deficit.

    Hello?  Hello?

end of article:

Ed Tel is a wholly owned corporation of the City of Edmonton.  AGT
Ltd., a private share holder owned company, is the Alberta provincial
provider of long distance service, and also all local services
excluding the City of Edmonton.
     

Richard Nash           Edmonton, Alberta Canada T6K 0E8
UUCP:                  rickie%trickie@ersys.edmonton.ab.ca
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