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PUTTING LIMITS ON AUTODIALERS

Ever had a pleasant diner interrupted by a telephone call, only to hear a tape-recorded voice greet you with an offer of something to buy? Then you may think there is nothing but good in congressional efforts to put a stop to such annoyances.

That reaction is perfectly understandable but but not entirely wise. Autodialers may not be to everyone's liking, but they have value to some buyers and sellers-otherwise, they would vanish on their own. Fortunately, there are ways to deal with the aggravations and abuses without barring the machines altogether.

Autodialers have grown in use because, as a New York Times story put it, " they don't eat, they don't sleep and their feelings never get hurt when people curse them or hang up on them. They just call and call and call-each one up to 1,500 times a day."

By one estimate, these gadgets make 20 million calls a day in the United

States, flogging a wide variety of goods and services. Most consumers, no doubt, hang up within seconds, if not milliseconds, but enough stay on the line to listen-and buy-that many companies wouldn't think of doing business without them.

They create problems beyond the interrupted meal. They can tie up phone lines, even after victims hang up, overwhelm electronic paging services and inflict unwanted expenses on cellular phone owners, who pay for incoming as well as outgoing calls.

The Senate recently passed two measures dealing with autodialers-one good and one bad. The good one, sponsored by Larry Pressler (R-S.D), directs the Federal Communications Commission to either let consumers shield themselves by registering their numbers or to put the autodialers all on one exchange, enabling consumers to block their calls. The bad one, offered by Ernest Hollings (D.-D.C.) bans autodialers from calling either fax machines or homes.

Hollings' blunderbuss approach would not only penalize businesses and consumers that benefit from autodialers, but probably run afoul of the Constitution as well. The 1st Amendment protects the freedom to speak-even by phone and even by recording. If Congress can't outlaw indecent messages provided by "phone sex" services-as the supreme Court has ruled-it presumably has to be careful with broad prohibitions on the delivery of messages by autodialer.

A better approach is to zero in on clear abuses. A House bill wouild ban calls to emergency lines of health care facilities, police and fire departments. It would put pagers and cellular phones off limits. And autodialers would be required to disconnect after the person called hangs up- someting not all do now.

Lawmakers should keep in mind that while recorded solicitations may be annoying to most consumers, they perform a valued function for some. It isn't too much to ask that Congress, in trying to protect the former, should also accommodate the interest of the latter.

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