Industry sources said that despite several caller ID gadgets being Telecom Engineering Centre approved and therefore, certified for use in DoT exchanges, the department has done little to bring awareness about the service among its own officials and the public. The service has to be made available free to the police and other emergency departments like traumacare/hospitals, according to a circular issued from Sanchar Bhavan. But many officials throughout the country are unaware of this and are refusing to do so.

According to ML Telecom sources, even though there are 43 players providing this service, DoT has not woken up to its commercial possibilities. The facility is not even mentioned in the new telephone directories as part of the services offered, unless manufacturerstake the initiative with the CGMs of MTNL and DoT.

For availing the caller ID service, DoT charges an installation cost of Rs 50 and a service fee of Rs 50 every month. If the customer wishes to deactivate the use, another Rs 50 is charged. However, many subscribers who purchase the gadget (the cost varies from Rs 1,000 to Rs 1,250) find that they have to run from pillar to post within the department to submit applications for use of the ID, sources said.

Though the software activation for the ID is a two-minute job, applications are often kept pending for weeks, sometimes months. According to Naveen Bhandari of Texonic Instruments, a dealer of ML Telecom's Caller ID, DoT officials are unaware of the procedures themselves and scare away customers by saying that the application would take months to clear.

In some areas, exchanges ask for a gazetted notification for the TEC approval. After the procedural agonies, the subscriber who is anyways charged for the service gets a message `call number unknown'when an obnoxious call emanates from a PCO, said sources.

Most of the DoT exchanges do not follow the uniform code of sending telephone numbers in the display unit, particularly the prefixes. Sometimes exchanges have problems in sending the country code, area code, STD code.

Despite TEC certifying 43 people, (who have spent large sums to get the testing and approval), the grey market is flourishing. Caller IDs not approved by TEC draw more power from the exchange causing lines to go dead. Yet DoT, in its own interest, is doing little to prevent this by not giving out the list of manufacturers authorised. Particularly when it stands to gain much by way of revenue, said sources.

But private basic telephony operators who are more market savvy are going ahead providing the services anyway. AirTel is providing it free as an initial offer and Tata Telecom has certified three players with whom customers can opt for purchases.