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