Fantastic telephone bill

Fantastic telephone bill

I have had my own experience with the illegal use of a
telephone line. Before this happened, I had often read letters to
the editor to the effect that readers' telephone bills had
unaccountably soared to millions of rupiah. Recently, a friend of
mine, a housewife, felt so exasperated about her soaring
telephone bill that she decided not to use her telephone line to
make calls. So, she would only receive calls and seriously saw to
it that the telephone was not used to make a single call. She
hoped to see her telephone bill reduced. She was disappointed,
though, when she found the bill for the month in question still
showed a huge amount. This went on to the next month.

One day I was greatly surprised when I got a phone call
looking for someone obviously not living at our house. Having
told the caller that it was a wrong number, I replaced the
receiver and then I lifted it again to call my husband at his
office; I couldn't because there was no tone. Then, while still
holding the receiver, I heard the telephone being dialed and then
a telephone conversation. I put back the receiver in its place
and 15 minutes later I tried to make a call again. Again, I could
not because the telephone conversation was still going on.

Then I remembered that my husband and my children had often
complained that it was difficult to call me as there was always a
busy signal. (In fact, in many cases I was not home.) This has
been going on for three years now. Over this period, my telephone
bills have been unreasonably high, considering the limited use of
the telephone.

How does someone else use my telephone line/number? Obviously
his telephone gets connected with my telephone line, so that he
can use my line when I do not use it. I am still curious, though,
how his telephone can get connected with my telephone line. Does
the connection take place when I lift the receiver and answer
"Wrong number"?

I do not know whether I am right because I am quite ignorant
about the mechanism of a telephone connection. I hope somebody
will tell me how this can happen so that other readers with the
same bad experience can do something to prevent this illegal use
of telephone lines from going on unchecked. I also want to know
whether there is a device that can show the number of a caller,
just like what a cellular phone can show. Then, if I activate an
answering machine when I am out or away, can my telephone line be
illegally used by a "telephone pulse thief"?

MRS. S. WALUYO

Jakarta