|
|
Article: Caller ID--classic retrofit engineering.
- Article from:
- EDN
- Article date:
- December 17, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. (US). This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
Those dinner-time telemarketers trying to sell us something are causing more and more of us to turn to a defensive weapon. On a small display that is built into a phone or is part of an adjunct box, caller ID shows you the date, time, phone number, and, usually, the "caller name" of the calling party. You can then decide whether you want to answer calls that originate from the identified number. The caller name is actually just the telephone subscriber's name, not necessarily the name of the person placing the call.
Caller ID is a classic retrofit-engineering design, defined by both the virtue and burden of telephony's backward and near-universal compatibility ...