<( Courtesy of TWGSC ][ 209/526-3194 )> HIGH TECH PHONES RING A BELL WITH NEW TOUCHES....... (01/03/85) After a long day on the job,social worker Betty Johnson returns to her Harrisburg, Pa., home to find the telephone ringing. Before she reaches the phone, the caller hangs up. But Johnson doesn't fret. She just punches three buttons and the instrument returns the last call received. Later, the telephone rings again. A small box flashes the caller's number. It's an acquaintance who loves nothing better than to complain. Rather than listen to the gripes, Johnson just leaves the phone on the hook. This is no futuristic fantasy. Johnson is benefiting from a remarkable new telephone service that could soon be available to telephone subscribers nation-wide. It's called CLASS -- for Custom Local Area Signaling Service -- and it takes telephone service to new levels of utility and convenience. Suppose you're tired of being pestered by a salesman. In the new world of CLASS, you can tell the telephone company never to put through calls from that number again. When someone dials you from that station, there will be a recording telling him that his call has been blocked. Should you wish to give some parties special priority, you can ask the telephone company to use a different ring when they call. GREATEST THING -------------- CLASS, which is currently being tested in Harrisburg and Orlando, Fla., also lets the telephone company easily trace annoying calls. Through she pays an extra $7 to $10 a month for the full package of CLASS services, Johnson calls it "the greatest thing since sliced bread." Bread it's not, but with CLASS and a host of other new services that have come to market since the breakup of AT&T, the 22 newly independent Bell operating companies (BOC's) are trying to bring in the dough. With state regulators restricting rates for basic telephone service, the local operating companies need these bells and whistles to provide badly required revenue growth, says Richard Eichhorn, an executive at Bell Atlantic, which controls most local telephone service in the Mid-Atlantic states. The search for new services is made possible by a revolution in technology. Today, a growing number of the switches used by the telephone company to complete your calls are actually giant computers that work at rates far faster and cheaper than was previously possible. By converting voices or data into computer language, or "digital codes," as it is known, the telephone system's transmission quality is also being improved significantly. In addition, fiber-optic cable, with the capacity to transmit 125,000 simultaneous telephone conversations through a thin glass strand, is being installed throughout the network. One of the hottest new gimmicks is a reincarnation of the nearly extinct party line. Named Phone-a-Friend or Talkline in some states, this service allows as many as 10 people to speak together on the phone. In New Mexico, Mountain Bell offers two "Open Line" numbers-one for teenagers, one for adults. The charge for Albuquerque residents: 20 cents for the first minute, 10 cents each extra minute. At least two couples have heard a different sort of ring -- that of wedding bells -- as a result of meeting through party-line service. For all of the allure of CLASS and its brethren, the most remarkable advances will involve data, rather than voice, communications. Come January, Pacific Bell will begin testing a device that converts a single phone line into two voice and five data channels. Called Project Victoria, this engineering tour de force not only expands the number of voice conversations that can be handled on a line but it may make services such as electronic shopping, home banking and utilty-meter reading by remote control economical for the first time. USHERING IN THE FUTURE ---------------------- Such services are a precursor to the phone system of the future, a global computerized network that will make it dramatically easier, cheaper and quicker to transmit sound, data and video images. The Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) will, for example, let an architect transmit drawings to a colleague overseas almost instantly while they carry on a conversation. Illinios Bell will install the first ISDN system in the U.S. -- for McDonald's Corporation headquaters -- next year. The network will allow the fast-food giant to send thousands of messages between telephones, data terminals, personal computers and facsimile machines without costly rewiring of its offices. Soon it will even be possible to assign calling numbers to individal customers, rather than to their home or office telephones. Your personal account number will travel with you wherever you go. By just dialing in the number at the nearest telephone station, callers will be able to reach you regardless of where you are. Before these exotic new services can be made publicly available,local and long-distance phone companies, equipment makers and foreign telecommunication authorities must reach agreement on ISDN standards. Moreover, the BOC's and AT&T must win Federal Communications Commission approval to offer computerized services through their networks. For many business users, the new world of telephony should bring great cost savings and productivity dividends. How quickly the innovations spread to the home will depend on consumer taste and budget. The question, says Gary Handler of Bell Communications Research-and-development support to the BOC's, is not whether these services are technically possible, but whether the consumer will want them. "We don't want to build white elephants," says Handler. "We want to make sure services have consumer acceptance." U.S. NEWS AND WORLD REPORT (DEC 85)