For once, Telkom makes me happy with Caller ID service

By Zatni Arbi

JAKARTA (JP): You may still remember an account by an anonymous letter writer that was published in the Your Letters column of June 3, 1999. Someone, who claimed to be a high-ranking police officer, had called him and tried to coerce him into making financial contributions. About two years ago, I had a very similar experience, and the caller said he was a colonel. What both of us have experienced are by no means isolated cases.

In my case, it was clear that the felon just picked numbers from the phone book. Not randomly, I suppose. My phone number was still listed under the name of the person who built the house where we live. He had a typical Chinese-Indonesian name.

I have to admit that this phony colonel managed to terrify me. Luckily I finally found an escape route. I told him that I agreed to donate some money but I had to call him back later as I was about to leave for a meeting at Cilangkap. He, of course, was not willing to give me his phone number.

Phone abuse may be more common than what people think. At one point, my family were rudely woken up by the persistent ringing of the phone at 3 a.m. When we picked up the phone and said "Hallo", the caller just hung up. The same thing happened again the next night, and the next, and the next.

Toward the end of last year, a woman made it a habit to call us at least once every few days to ask the same question: "Is Sien Tauw there?" At first, we politely tried to convince her that there was nobody in our house with that name. Yet, she seemed to get so much enjoyment out of asking that question of us that we eventually lost our patience. She, however, was not deterred by our increasingly rude responses and kept calling.

And, to add to all the nuisance that we have had with these phone abusers, a major private university in our area has also claimed that their phone numbers are xxx-xxx2-5, which erroneously includes my home phone number. So, my family members are now trained to be telephone operators for that university.

Each time a call comes in to speak to someone from the "Fakultas Teknik" or "Bagian Administrasi", we will answer politely that the correct number they should dial is xxx-xxx2 and xxx-xxx5. Still, no matter how polite we try to sound in telling these callers that they are calling a residential number, there are some who talk to us so rudely that, for a split second, we would wonder whether it's really worth it to try to be helpful to fellow human beings.

Such is the tribulation that this otherwise tremendously convenient modern amenity has brought. But, thank God, a large portion of this will finally disappear. For a couple of days now my family has been enjoying Caller ID, the latest feature offered by Telkom.

I Know You

In other parts of the world, Caller ID has been around for many years, and, in fact, I have already written about it a couple of times in this column. In the U.S., Caller ID has helped prevent Pizza Hut delivery guys from climbing to a lone grandma's apartment with boxes of steaming Super Supreme ordered by some youth pranksters.

In Singapore, Caller ID has enabled taxi companies provide very efficient services. Now, in more and more areas in Jakarta, Caller ID has finally saved us from unscrupulous as well as simply rude callers.

Indonesian cellular phone users have been familiar with Caller ID for quite a long time. Now it is beginning to be available for fixed lines as well. You need a special device or special telephone that will display the number of the calling party, though.

The number will be kept in the device's memory, so you can check it later as long as it is not erased. It also helps you keep track of the outgoing calls that your teenage daughter makes, even though she makes her calls through her own extension.

You will have to pay Telkom a Rp 25,000 activation fee, and a Rp 10,000 monthly service charge. The peace of mind this feature brings us is certainly worth more than that.

My first opportunity to test the power of Caller ID came on the day the service was activated. At about 5:30 a.m., our phone rang. When my wife picked up the phone and said "Hallo" as usual, all she heard was silence. Just one minute after she hung up, the phone rang again and this time it was the screeching sound of a fax machine.

"Someone is trying to send us a fax," I tried to think positively, so I activated our fax machine. Nothing came out. I checked my Caller ID display, and it showed an unfamiliar number 02157719xx.

"Somebody has had to stay late at the office and has decided to have some fun," we concluded. Unfortunately, the operator at 108 was not allowed to give us the name of the owner. That was still OK, though, because at least we already had the number.

Multiple Standards

Three major standards for Caller ID protocol are being used throughout the world today, FSK and DTMF and ETSI. Japan, Britain and Brazil have their own standards. Here in Indonesia, Telkom, assisted by Siemens, has adopted the Bellcore FSK standard. Telkom does not sell any Caller ID device, but they require that you already have the device and show them the receipt for its purchase before they will activate the feature on your number.

If you decide to buy a Caller ID display device abroad, you have to make sure that the device can handle FSK. More devices come with dual standards -- for example, both FSK and DTMF -- with the capability to automatically detect which standard is being used.

In Jakarta, a good place to find the device is still Harco Glodok. One store there offered me a full-featured Caller ID device for Rp 100,000. I decided instead to buy a TORIPhone for Rp 185,000 in another store. It turned out that was not the right choice, because the phone has a rather substandard audio quality. Besides, the memory can only store up to 25 numbers only. If you already have a decent telephone set, you'd be better off buying a more versatile, separate Caller ID device with more memory capacity.

Incidentally, Telkom also has a list of products that they have tested. You can contact one of the service points and ask them to fax you the list of the vendors of these products.

One problem I have found is that Telkom's switching sends the entire number of the calling party to our devices, including the 021 prefix. This makes it impossible for me to use the one-touch Call-Back button on the phone when the number is displayed. I still have to dial all seven or eight digits manually. When I checked with Telkom, I was told that there was no plan to truncate the area code.

If you don't have Caller ID yet, call 162 and check whether this feature is already available on your public switching. Even when the calling party manages to have their number blocked, you will still have the advantage of being informed about it in the display. Caller ID will significantly reduce your vulnerability.