Hi Brian,
BL>How does australia bar overseas calling?  Is it a flag set by
BL>customer service or an option right on your phone?
Wnen we get a cellphone, we automatically get access to call all areas 
including international calls. The customer can either bar international 
access via the phone by issuing the appropriate command which is 
transmitted to the cell and is password controlled. The other way is to 
ring up customer service who will do the same thing.
BL>Only problem in Canada is getting overseas calling put on your
BL>line outside of 8 am to 8 pm when customer service is set up to
BL>deal with it.  Actually outside of those hours, if you had a
BL>genuine emergency you could ask them to page the on-call manager
BL>and plead your case with them.
Seems like a strange arrangement to me. The day I got my cellphone, I 
had full capability of making calls to anywhere in the world at any time 
of day or night.
BL>Cellular fraud is a very big problem mainly in the U.S. though
BL>but they often grab esn and phone number information from phones
BL>in Canada to feed to cloners in New York City.
Maybe this is why GSM digital will be the only system in Australia once 
analog is phased out in year 2000. Seems that security is pretty good on 
GSM from what I hear.
I have not heard of any problems here with cloning or similar. There was 
a bit of a sting pulled by the cops not long ago, when they caught a 
gang of phone thieves who had pinched a few thousand GSM phones and sold 
them, not realising that these phones constantly transmit their serial 
numbers to the cells.
The authorities just flagged the stolen serial numbers and tracked down 
the people using the hot phones, because the nice thing is that the 
phones indicate which cell they are accessing at any one time, and 
direction-finding them is a piece of cake if you know the rough location 
already. Most people don't realise that these phones are nothing more 
than fancy walkie-talkies which transmit RF costantly, making them very 
easy to find.
From interrogating the buyers of the hot phones, the cops found out who 
sold them, thus they had the thieves in the bag.
Cheers - Ziggy
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