Path: utzoo!telecom-request Date: Sat, 27 Apr 1991 22:32:42 -0400 From: Jamie Mason Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Per Line Blocking? Message-ID: Organization: University of Toronto Computer Science Undergraduate Student Sender: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 312, Message 5 of 5 Lines: 67 In article Peter Creath writes: > According to the most recent issue of {Popular Science} (in the What's > New - Electronics section), they said a new box for Caller ID is now > available, one which displays the callers NAME as well as phone number. > Now, it didn't specify whether the name was transmitted by the Caller > ID system or whether the owner of the box had to program in names and > numbers. > [Moderator's Note: Well I would rather suspect the owner of the box > has to load the information matching certain numbers and names. How > would telco know who was calling? All they can say for sure is the > number. PAT] Here in Toronto, we have Caller-ID, only the call it 'Call Display', as part of Bell Canada's 'Call Management Services' line of services. The box for Caller-ID that we use is a Northern Telecom widget called 'Interlude'. According to the manual for this device, it will display the name, as well as the number of the calling part, subject to local availability. There is *NO WAY* "the owner of the box" could "to load the information matching certain numbers and names". The box has the following interfaces to the external world: - Two single-twisted-pair modular connector jacks. - One dot-matrix lcd-pixel display. - One buttong on the front - One two-position switch on the back. You plug the phone into one jack, and the wall into the other one. :-) The display displays, the number, the time and date of the most recent call from that number, (and potentially the name). The button on the front used to review the circular buffer of the last five calls. The switch on the back switches between English and French. Holding down "review" while toggling the language switch initiates a self-test and reset. That's it, that's all there is. How will the owner load the data? By bit bashing, using the 'review' button as CLOCK and the "language" switch as DATA? :-) Because of the "Subject to local availability", and the fact that my box works, but does not display names, I must assume that if the name is to be provided, it is provided in the Caller-ID datagram which is inserted between the first and second rings. By the way, I *really wish* it *would* display the name. Either that, or I would appreciate a reverse phone book, by phone number, of Toronto, preferrably on computer. It would also be nice if Bell would release the standard (method of transmission and format) of the Caller-ID datagram, for us curious folk. I can conceive of answering machines, for instance, which could record the number as well as the time on the tape, for those who are shy of answering machines and don't leave a message. I can also coneive of modems which could make the calling number available to the computer ... but this requires devices made by other companies than Northern Telecom to be able to decode the datagram. Jamie