AT&T; ‘700’ Lines Let Calls Track Down Recipients

First there was the 800 number, then the 900 number. On Tuesday, AT&T; brought out 700 numbers, which follow people anywhere they go in the 48 contiguous states.

AT&T; said it expects 700 numbers to appeal to people who travel frequently, or to working parents who don’t want to miss calls while commuting between home and office.

Telecommunications analysts hailed the 700 numbers as futuristic, but at least one consumer activist said 700 numbers are too cumbersome to catch on.

The new service is available only to AT&T; long-distance customers and is aimed primarily at residential phone users. The 700 numbers are permanent and will follow consumers even if they move out of state.

People who sign up for the new service give out the 700 number to people whose calls they want to receive no matter where they are. When 700 customers leave home, they program their phones to forward calls to the office, a hotel or even a car phone.

AT&T; said the 700 numbers were an advancement on the call-forwarding systems now available from Pacific Bell and other local telephone companies because consumers can choose which calls follow them.

Pacific Bell said, however, that it is awaiting government approval of a “select call-forwarding” system that would match many of the features offered by AT&T.; In addition, analysts expected Sprint and MCI to come out with similar call-forwarding services.

“The competition is such that you can’t let anyone get ahead for long,” said Courtney Munroe, an analyst with the Northern Business Info/DataPro market research firm in New York.

Telecommunications analysts said the 700 numbers were the first step in the wireless follow-you-anywhere telephone technology that is still under development. Researchers envision a phone system in which calls are automatically routed to where the recipient of the call is.

“It’s an interesting new wrinkle,” telecommunications analyst Bradford L. Peery said of AT&T;’s 700 service. “It is the first step in the ‘phone number from birth’ technology.”

How popular the service will be with consumers isn’t clear. Ken McEldowney, executive director of San Francisco-based Consumer Action, said the 700 service appears too complex for most consumers.

“The one rule in the phone world is that if it is simple, it is successful,” he said. “This seems so complicated to me.”

McEldowney said that consumers are likely to be discouraged by the need to reprogram their phones every time they change locations. “It seems easier to get an answering machine and just call in for messages,” he said.

AT&T; said it decided to offer the new service after conducting extensive consumer research. It said that 60% of consumers said it was important to make it easier for people to reach them, while 50% of consumers wanted to choose who could reach them.

Besides getting a new 700 phone number, subscribers will also receive 19 four-digit code numbers to distribute to select people. Subscribers can program their phones to forward calls placed only by people who also dial the four-digit code.

All other calls, including other 700 number calls, will go unanswered or be picked up by an answering machine.

AT&T; said the subscriber pays for calls involving the special codes, but the caller pays for other 700 calls. The monthly fee for the service is $7.

State-to-state rates for each call will be 25 cents per minute from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, and 15 cents per minute at all other times.