Thank you for your reply. I'll look into it.
You are right, I remember 3 and 4 digit phone numbers and someone who asked "Number, Please" when you took the phone off hook. That ended when we got dial.
My first ISP was AT&T Worldnet. We tried this service in the late 1990's and found it unreliable. It was hard to get any support service. We moved to jps.net in Sacramento. It worked great until Mr. Jenkens was bought out and over time the service fell into the hands of EarthLink. Their service is slow and relatively expensive. They have only the 'inertia of rest' to thank for our continued business.
I did some searching after making this post. Clearly the person I spoke to at 1-800-288-2020 did not understand or was badly misinformed. I found this website:
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www.privacyrights.org/ca ··· rivacy#4I may have read something like it around 1995 (when it was made available) when I reasoned the complete blocking made the most sense.
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articles.latimes.com/key ··· atured/3Here is an example of a typical headline that might have influenced my thinking.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
Caller ID Is Coming: Beware! : Come June 1, dialing may tell more about you than you'd like
February 29, 1996
The telephone is an indispensable but increasingly perplexing tool of modern life. So many choices. You sign up for a new long-distance phone service because Candice Bergen or Whoopi Goldberg seem so amusing in those TV commercials. Now comes a new challenge: Caller ID. Should your phone number be flashed to whomever you are calling?
The PrivacyRights page reads:
2. How does blocking work?
FCC rules require local phone companies to make available free, simple, and uniform per-line blocking and unblocking processes. These rules give you the choice of delivering or blocking your phone number for any interstate (between states) calls you make. (The FCC does not regulate intrastate calls.)
Some Caller ID services also transmit the name of the caller. If you request that your phone number be concealed, FCC rules require that a carrier also conceal your name.
The two blocking options are:
Per-Call Blocking. (Also known in some states as Selective Blocking.) To block your phone number or name from appearing on a recipient's Caller ID unit on a single phone call, dial *67 before dialing the phone number. Your number ordinarily will not be sent to the other party. (See exceptions below.) But you must redial *67 each time you place another call.
Per-Line Blocking. (Also known in some states as Complete Blocking.) Some states allow customers to select per-line blocking so that their phone number will be blocked for every call they make on a specific line unless they use the per-line unblocking option. If you want the number transmitted to the called party, dial *82 before you dial the number you are calling. You must redial *82 each time you want to unblock.
The more I think about what I read there, the more I think that the Per Line Blocking (Complete Blocking) which we now have is the better option. I just need to develop the habit of tipping in *82 when I call someone I know directs all "restricted" calls to voicemail directly.
I will do some research on DSLExtreme. Clearly the speed they can offer will continue to be limited by the severely bridge-tapped copper between us and our central office. The area nearer the office was developed before 1950 and my surrounding neighborhood in 1955, so none of the cabling is anything like new.
It is time we reviewed our service terms. I thought we'd signed up for minimum cost service, but that was 40+ years ago.