The Free Phone Call

Like subway turnstiles and slot machines, the telephone is a traditional target for those Americans with a yen for outwitting the machine age. Before science developed the foolproof pay phone, nearly every college boy knew how to make it disgorge a tinkling stream of nickels. Last week Illinois Bell Telephone Co. ruefully explained another game that costs it as much as $400,000 annually: the free call, in which by various stratagems thousands of callers in toll booths and at home use the phone company's wires without ever paying a cent. At Bell's urging, the Illinois State Commerce Commission last week adopted a regulation allowing the phone company to refuse service to anyone caught ducking the charges for calls.

A Call to Himself. The digits for the free calls, says Bell, are hundreds of codes made up by users to get the desired information across without appearing to complete a call. Some are ridiculously simple, others awesomely elaborate, but all quite effective. One favorite is the no-answer code. A commuter who misses his train, for example, calls home at a prearranged time, lets the phone ring a predetermined number of times, then hangs up. Depending on the number of rings, his wife knows just what train he will catch, and what time to be at the station. Another much-used gimmick is the collect call. The husband calls collect as "Mr. Brown at 528 Madison Avenue." His wife refuses to accept the call, then trots off to meet the 5:28 train. Still another variation is the safe-arrival code. A traveler takes a plane from Chicago to New York, then phones home person-to-person and asks to speak to himself. His wife is thus informed that he has arrived safe and sound.

A Carload on Wednesday. Even worse, says Illinois Bell, are the companies that use the no-toll long distance call to transact business. Some produce firms, collection agencies and manufacturers are among the offenders, costing the telephone company untold revenue every year. A fruit company in California may call its distributor in Chicago, and ask for "Mr. Brown." Translated, the words mean that it has a carload of seedless grapefruit at $2 a case. The answer, "Sorry, Mr. Brown is in Portland," means, "Fine, send a car load for Wednesday delivery."

No one knows exactly how much free callers cost U.S. phone companies every year, but the estimates run well into the millions. The game has grown so fast and so expensive that in the past year 45 states (all except Nebraska, Wisconsin and Louisiana) have adopted regulations similar to the one established last week in Illinois. But at best the rules are only a moral deterrent. For one thing, hard evidence is almost impossible to get. For another, the phone companies hesitate to make a real issue of it --the publicity may give thousands more telephone users ingenious new ideas.

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