karl@sugar.UUCP (Karl Lehenbauer) (04/25/87)
Phone users in Austin Texas now have a service available called "Star 66."
It enables you to call the last person who called you by dialing ("dialing",
an anachronism in the modern age, is it not?) *66. It's great for calling
back the people who hung up right before you answered. It also would be
cool for calling back the more stupid of the anonymous/obscene callers.
Presumably, even modestly intelligent anon./obscene callers would use
pay phones if they don't already.
Regarding not being able to screen calls if/when that becomes available
for fear that you'll miss a call from your daughter-in-trouble calling
from a payphone, yes, you can't preemptively screen calls but you could
still screen them from specific numbers. This would at least prevent
callbacks for sleazy solicitors (or would it? more in a sec...) and others
who you just don't want to talk to at the time.
RE: Preventing callbacks from sleazy solicitors.
Since they use lots of lines, it would be impossible to cover all of them
in advance. How about making all solicitors forward a code with their
number indicating that they are making unsolicited solicitations? Then
we could generically lock them out (especially the obnoxious computerized
robot solicitors) without locking out calls from all unspecified numbers.
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