Caller Id

C&P Telephone will seek reconsideration of the Public Service Commission's decision mandating that it offer free blocking with its Caller ID services. The response was predictable, but it is misguided. Caller ID has never been, as the phone company has contended, a simple issue of ensuring the privacy of the person who gets a call in the middle of the night. Rather, the technology has, from its inception, raised tangled ethical questions.With a $50 attachment and for a monthly fee of $6 or $7, Caller ID enables a customer to see a caller's number displayed on a small screen while the phone is ringing and, presumably, decide whether to answer.

Per-call blocking will allow any caller in Maryland to prevent his telephone number from being displayed on a Caller ID screen.Per-call blocking will work like this: Before dialing a number, you dial a two- or three-digit code. That's it.Once the code, which hasn't yet been determined, is dialed C&P's network will not transmit your number to a Caller ID display device. So even if you dial a number connected to Caller ID, the letter "P" or "Private" will show up on the Caller ID screen, not your phone number.

GREAT news from my telephone company! It came in the last phone bill."Important Notice," it said."Thank God!" I cried. "At last!"My wife's face, careworn and exhausted from endless days and nights of trying to persuade various telephone-company salesmen that we did not want to abandon our present telephone company and hire theirs -- yes, that dear but careworn wifely face looked for all too brief a moment young and vibrant once again as it had looked in...

If you have only one or two telephone jacks, in odd places, in your house, Siemens Gigaset SL3501 expandable cordless telephone system ($220) might appeal to you. Once you buy the SL3501 base kit, you can create wireless connections with up to four Gigaset SL30 telephones ($150) - or any Siemens 4000 or 4200 series telephone handset. Just plug in your SL3501 base station to the telephone jack, then find locations for the handsets. You'll need a nearby electrical outlet for each phone station; these recharge the handset battery in each handset.

Subsidiary launched in Columbia to aid security on Internet PricewaterhouseCoopers has launched a new subsidiary, beTRUSTed. The company, with headquarters in Columbia, will provide digital certificates for businesses hoping to conduct secure Internet transactions. Information: www.betrusted.com. Technology firm OK'd to sell phone system MIT Group, a technology company based in Columbia, has received authorization to sell 3Com NBX 100 Business Phone Systems. The all-in-one system includes voice mail, automated attendant, Caller ID, conferencing, call forwarding, messaging and speed dialing.

He pulls to the curb in his dented sedan, grabs a bag containing the extra-large pepperoni and strides to the front of a dilapidated-looking rowhouse. Pizza deliveryman Shakeel Anjum knows too well that criminals have attacked people in his line of work several times recently, and he's working at a brisk pace. He rings the bell and gets no response. He calls inside on his cellphone and gets no answer. That's a bad sign to Anjum, who has been robbed and assaulted on the job. He returns to his car, starts it up and drives away.

LAUREL -- Those show mutuels on yesterday's Laurel Race Course simulcast of the Sanford Stakes from Saratoga are no misprint.Laurel publicity director Damon Thayer said one bettor at the Pimlico intertrack facility wagered "about $11,000" to show on heavily favored Salt Lake. After the colt was eased in the stretch, the Tote board flashed big payoffs on the top three finishers.Caller I.D., the race winner, paid $7.20 to win -- and $19.60 to show. And the 2-3 finishers, Pick Up the Phone and Money Run, paid $21.80 and $28.60 to show, respectively.

A great debate is raging over "Caller ID" telephone services, which display the number of the calling telephone on a small liquid-crystal display screen.Some people say the service will enhance privacy by allowing the receiver to screen unwanted calls. Others say Caller ID has the potential to erode privacy by, for example, forcing the caller to divulge an unlisted number.In either case, many people believe the computer technology that underlies the advances in telephones is likely to emerge as the focus of the privacy debate in the electronic 1990s.

Bell Atlantic Corp. made its money the new-fashioned way in the first quarter -- by growing emerging businesses such as cellular and the Internet much faster than traditional phone service on the way to an 11 percent overall gain in quarterly profits.The Philadelphia-based firm, which is the dominant local phone service provider throughout Maryland, said that on March 31 its cellular business had almost 30 percent more subscribers than a year before, while the total number of Integrated Service Digital Network lines rose 45 percent.

Black MarshEditor: The article "Wonderful Life" (Opinion * Commentary, Dec. 26) leads me to write about my visit to Black Marsh in eastern Baltimore County.There, for the first time in my life, I saw bald eagles in flight. In the 1,310-acre park of wetlands and woods, I saw hawks and herons and deer and the tracks of muskrats. I saw the beautiful open water of the Chesapeake Bay. All this lies within 15 minutes of the Baltimore beltway. I talked with watermen who told me that the crabbing was good and that this year's rockfish hatch there had been more successful than in most parts of the bay.Now I understand that the Maryland Department of Natural Resources wants to pour some concrete over this very beautiful and also valuable natural resource.