[PLUG-TALK] Phone spam blocker

[Keith Lofstrom]

In spite of no-call lists, *77, etc., my house phone has been
getting about six calls a day from "OUT OF AREA", between 8am
and midnight.  On the few times I've answered, I get dead air
and then a hangup.  Frontier is no help - the people providing
phone support are great, but they cannot change policy or
reprogram the local switch so *77 blocks everything without
a valid caller ID.

So I broke down and spent $100 on a "Digitone Call Blocker 10"
( http://www.digitone.com ).  While the device has way more
programmable features than I need right now, it is designed
the way I want.  It goes in line between the demarc on the
FIOS ONT and the rest of the lines in the house.  It suppresses
the first ring, pulls the caller ID information between rings,
and either passes along the second ring and the call, or 
picks up the phone for 5 seconds and hangs up.  The display
shows that it has intercepted about a dozen "OUT OF AREA"
calls since I installed it two days ago.  It can also be
programmed with a large list of numbers to ignore (including
wildcards,  so you can block a centrex range for a call center)
and privacy hours and call-anytime numbers and so forth.  
Again, more complexity than I need now, but nice to know the
extra features can be enabled later.

I've got three pair wiring to all the RJ-11s in the house,
but I am currently only using one.  So, I route the signal out
of the demarc to line 2, then use the box  (in the kitchen,
but it can go anywhere) to bridge between line 2 and line 1,
connecting to the half dozen line 1 phones in the house.  It
might be less convenient if all the lines were committed. 
One box can only serve one line - if I had a bunch of lines,
I would probably use a small asterisk appliance.

As we approach the political madness season, it might be good
for you to order one of these to block all the push polls and
screaming yahoos demanding that we vote for fluoridated casinos
or whatever.  They ship from Reno NV, two days away by priority
mail, but I suspect they will run out before the election.

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com         Voice (503)-520-1993
KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon"
Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs