Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 24, 1994                   TAG: 9408250039
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Sandra Brown Kelly
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SOME APPARENTLY FIND PHONES TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING

According to the the latest trivia from the Census Bureau's "Phoneless in America" report, Mississippi has the highest percentage of phoneless households, followed by New Mexico, Arkansas, West Virginia and Kentucky. And more men who live alone do not have telephones than do women alone or married-couple families.

You have to wonder, how do these phoneless people live? Isolated? Peacefully?

A telephone is like a good, tough teacher. You don't always appreciate it, but when you do, you really, really do. The phone company provides services to fit almost anyone's purse - as low as $2.50 a month for low-income subscribers - but if cost is no object, Bell Atlantic can fix you up with technology so complex that it gives new meaning to comedian Lily Tomlin's line:

"Is this the party to whom I am speaking?"

Phones do so many things that it might be possible to have one that won't accept any calls.

And some of the services are downright humorous. For example, last week Bell Atlantic-Virginia introduced Caller ID Deluxe.

That's a service giving the subscriber a readout of the telephone number and the name of the customer assigned that number for each incoming call.

Another service, Per Call Blocking, allows a caller to keep his or her name from being given.

Yet a third service, Anonymous Call Rejection, allows a household to block the call of a caller who has blocked his or her name.

Still with me?

In other words, depending on which phone services you and a caller have, you could end up just getting recordings saying the call can't be made.

Anonymous Call Rejection is free with Caller ID or Caller ID Deluxe and costs everyone else $3. It is projected as especially useful in preventing obscene calls on the assumption that people who talk dirty on the phone don't want their names given to people they're calling.

That's the suggestion from Paul Miller, corporate spokesman for Bell Atlantic-Virginia, who admitted that he can't quickly figure out all the phone services his company offers. And don't even try to talk about the corporate services available, he said.

Miller knew, from experience, that you have to buy two call-answering services if you have two numbers that use the same line. The two numbers/one line setup is popular with households that include teen-agers. It's less expensive than getting two lines and you still can keep the calls separate with Identa-Ring.

That's a service providing different ringing sounds for each number, allowing parents and children to avoid answering each other's calls.

Miller also had some interesting explanations for how some other services function:

If you have five people you never want to hear from, consider Call Block, he said. When those people try to ring you up, they get a message that you "choose not to" receive their calls.

And to keep your equipment in good repair, in case you should want to take a call, Bell Atlantic offers both Optional Wire Maintenance Plan and the Guardian Plan.

The maintenance plan, for 85 cents a month, gives you line-repair service from the phone company. The Guardian Plan will give you line service and even a phone, Miller said.