The 700 Club

( With AT&T;' s new area code, your home phone is wherever you are

IS THE NEW SCHEME AT&T; ANNOUNCED LAST WEEK A blessing or a blight? Those who can't bear to be out of touch will love the company's new EasyReach 700 service, which gives subscribers a lifelong telephone number that is assigned to the person, not to a particular phone line. Those who think the telephone is already too intrusive will probably want to reach out and touch someone with a baseball bat.

The new service, which AT&T; considers a forerunner of future phoning patterns, is simple. Anyone who signs up -- there are about 6 million subscriptions to go around -- gets...

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