TELEMARKETERS COME CLEAN, OR THEIR CALLS DON'T GO THROUGH

Telemarketers may have met their match. A new service from Midwestern phone giant Ameritech promises to police those intrusive sales hounds. Dubbed Privacy Manager, the nifty offering goes a step beyond Caller ID, by actually intercepting unlisted callers marked "blocked" -- before your phone rings.

How does it work? Software lodged in a phone company's central office asks these callers to cough up their names, so it can tell the subscriber who's on the line. If, like most pesky marketers, the caller cowers and declines to give a name (preliminary testing found that 70% wouldn't identify themselves), Privacy Manager disconnects the call without an annoying ring that forces you to rise from the dinner table. Users can even choose to have the system's computerized voice tell dinnertime intruders that telemarketing calls are not accepted and that the user's name should be put on the solicitor's "do not call" list -- a legally binding request, Ameritech officials say.

Ameritech, which admits to its share of telemarketing, says the "great" thing about the product is that it offers customers choice -- the option to take or avoid calls. The new service costs about $11.50 a month: $3.95 for Privacy Manager, plus $7.50 for Caller ID.

Sound too good to be true? Depends on where you live. Customers in Chicago and Detroit will get the service immediately, while others in Ameritech's five-state local-phone-service territory will get it by late 1999. The rest of the country might come more slowly. Ameritech is working on a licensing agreement with telecom equipment maker Lucent Technologies: In time, Lucent may make Privacy Manager available to more regional phone companies. Until then, consumers who feel besieged must grin and answer it.

By Roger Crockett in Chicago