THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, November 2, 1995 TAG: 9511020363
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DAVE MAYFIELD, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 53 lines
Your son was supposed to be doing his homework, but he spent the whole evening talking to his girlfriend instead.
Your roommate is three months behind on her portion of the rent, yet she calls her sister in Rome every week and talks for half an hour or more.
Sound familiar?
What you need is a lock on the phone, one that only you can open. Bell Atlantic Corp. announced Wednesday that it has a solution that will soon be available to 90,000 residential customers in South Hampton Roads.
``Call Gate'' is the name of the service. For $5 a month, it offers customers with Touch-Tone phones the ability to block any and all outgoing calls except 911. The service lets customers change the mix of blocked numbers instantly and as many times as one likes.
``With the technology we have, it's easier and easier for us to put control in the hands of the customer,'' said Eric Lunn, manager of new product development for Bell Atlantic's Consumer Services unit.
Outbound call blocking is already widely available in limited forms. Both Bell Atlantic and GTE Corp., for instance, let customers block calls to all 900 numbers for a small monthly fee.
But to activate or deactivate the blocks, customers must call the phone company office. And the blocks tend to cover whole classes of phone numbers.
Lunn said Bell Atlantic's new service will let customers completely customize the list of numbers that can't be called and change the list on their own by punching codes on their phones. One day you can block only international calls, the next day calls only to New York's 212 area code, and the day after that just calls to your daughter's crosstown schoolmate. Or you could block all calls except those within Virginia's 804 area code, and, if you choose, block out the Richmond part of that code.
Lunn said the midwestern regional Bell, Ameritech, was the first to offer such a service, in Wisconsin. He said Bell Atlantic wants to eventually expand its service throughout the mid-Atlantic.
Many more customized call blocking options - both inbound and outbound - will be offered by his and other phone companies in the next few years, he predicted. ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
A list of South Hampton Roads exchanges in which ``Call Gate'' will
be available:
[For complete graphic, please see microfilm]
by CNB