PacBell’s Controversial Blocking Service to Begin

Increasing the stakes in an already contentious battle over phone privacy, Pacific Bell on Thursday said it will begin offering a service that automatically blocks incoming calls that don’t reveal the caller’s phone number.

Anonymous call rejection, which will be offered free beginning Saturday to PacBell customers who request it, is controversial because it penalizes those who want to keep their numbers private, by not allowing their calls to go through.

Anonymous call rejection, nicknamed the “block-the-blocker” service, is offered in other states and by GTE, but the introduction by PacBell is expected to have wider impact because of its millions of customers penchant for aggressive sales tactics.

Through the introduction of anonymous call rejection, or ACR, PacBell hopes to boost sales of its lucrative caller ID service, which displays an incoming caller’s name and phone number on a special screen. Caller ID is popular elsewhere but has sold more slowly in California because nearly half of PacBell’s customers block their numbers from the display machines.

“I think people don’t understand the implications of this, and I think it’s going to cause a lot of confusion,” said Kelly Boyd, a senior telecommunications analyst at the Office of Ratepayer Advocates, the consumer advocacy arm of the California Public Utilities Commission.

So far, fewer than 3,000 PacBell customers have said they want the service. But PacBell has more than 1 million caller ID subscribers, and many are expected to add the call-rejection feature.

After Saturday, callers who have blocked their phone numbers from caller ID displays will increasingly hear this recording: “The party you called does not accept calls from blocked numbers. To complete your call and reveal your number, dial *82 then the number. . . . To prevent the display of your number, you can use a pay phone, or, for a charge, call the operator.”

Customers who receive the call-rejection recording will not be charged for the call, said PacBell.

After March 19, ACR will still be offered free to caller ID subscribers. Other customers will have to pay $2 per month.

“This creates an enormous disincentive for people to keep their complete blocking because they’re not going to be able to get hold of large numbers of people,” said Charles Carbone, a telecommunications analyst with the Utility Consumers’ Action Network, a San Diego-based consumer group.

That is especially true because the call-rejection service will also be sold to retailers and other commercial operations.

“For businesses, there is no legitimate use for this service,” Carbone said. “By using ACR, businesses are saying, ‘If you want to do business with us, you have to open up a window into your life,’ and through that window, the company can now create a marketing database, with your name and number and then get your address and follow up by calling you and trying to sell you more products.”

That prospect has already sparked concern among state legislators, who recently passed a bill prohibiting the sale of anonymous call rejection to businesses. The bill has not yet been signed by Gov. Pete Wilson.

PacBell touts ACR as a privacy-enhancing tool that allows customers to reject interruptions from unknown callers.

But the service won’t do much to thwart telemarketers, considered by many to be the biggest nuisance of all. Telemarketers are not allowed to block their numbers from caller ID machines.

Recognizing caller ID’s threat to privacy, California regulators forced the phone companies to offer customers the option of blocking the transmission of their phone number and name on every outbound call.