Wireless and weird phones
Wireless service:
Much easier than a phone connection is a mobile phone. If you enlist (by phone), you may have the service and the wireless phone operational the next day. Beware of the rates, however, because they easily go up to $ 0.5 per minute outside your home area. In addition to the airtime fee, you may have to pay for a local access fee, a long distance fee, an access fee for the phone company on the other side of the line, a roaming fee, and local and state taxes on top of this. Furthermore, you will pay both for the calls that you make and for the calls that you receive. This last part is very interesting for those of you that are used to GSM networks where incoming calls are free, unless you are roaming. Since US citizens are used to pay for incoming calls some phone companies providing mobile rental phone at European airport gladly continue this habit.
You need to sign up for 12 months to get a reasonable rate, with a penalty if you want to quit the subscription before the agreed date. Competition in the New York/New Jersey area is stiff, so check for the special deals, like 50% off your rate for 6 months. The phone itself is often offered free of charge. Without a wireline home phone number, chances are high that you need to pay a security deposit before being allowed to get service.
Unwanted telephone calls:
Faxes and other computer devices at home are normal in the USA. Telecommuting may become mandatory for one or more days a week in New Jersey to reduce air (ozone) pollution. Advertisement and automatic updates by fax are frequently used. In our case, our number probably had been used by someone who had it listed with several companies for info or order updates by fax. A couple of times per day our phone started ringing, and produced beeping sounds when we answered it. The faxes favored the early hours in the morning (4.30 am) or weekends (7 am Saturday). This started to become annoying and we called Bell Atlantic. They gave us a call-trace number (*57) that we should call immediately after the 'beep'-call. Charge is $ 1 per use. On some of the calls we got a computer acknowledgment, on some other the computer voice told us that they could not be traced automatically. For the traceable calls, the Call Annoyance Center of Bell Atlantic told us some days later that the calls came from a private person, in which case only the police was allowed to pursue action. So we went to the local police, who made a 'harassment' report and took action to stop the calls. That helped reduce the number of unwanted calls substantially.
Bell Atlantic then switched a call-trap on our line for the calls from outside the call-trace area, that allowed them to track all calls. This service is free of charge, and requires that you leave a message about the times and type of calls every day at a special phone number. A week later, Bell Atlantic called us with the information that they traced the companies that made the calls, and faxed them an official request to erase our number from their fax machine(s). A couple of days later most of the calls stopped, with the exception of one or two very persistent fax machines. Without further support from Bell Atlantic or the local police there was no other resolution than to connect a fax machine to the line and wait until it started to produce unwanted faxes. From those faxes we traced the company who owned the fax service and let them know we would sue them for harassment if they continued sending us this crap. The magic word "sueing" made sure none of them ever called again.
Other annoying calls are the marketing calls for new products or services. Although the sales people are polite, they may call at times that you do not want to be disturbed. They sometimes ask only for the 'lady' of the house, probably to sell household things or other stuff for which the 'gentleman' is not seen as target. The calls are the result of a lively trade in phone numbers by the telephone companies, and privacy laws are virtually nonexistent in the USA. The telemarketing companies are required to provide you, on request, with a telephone number for complaints or remove of your name from their database.