Your Call Is Important

By Rebecca Myers

Until last week, Dereck Shelton was nearly unreachable. Homeless for the past year, Shelton had no phone number to give to friends, family and potential employers. "People in a position to hire make judgments about a person without a phone," he says. "They don't take that person seriously." That may change, thanks to Project C.A.R.E., a new program run by the San Francisco communications start-up GrandCentral. C.A.R.E. is giving Shelton and hundreds of other homeless people free permanent numbers, which go to voicemail boxes. The plan may be thwarted, though, by the Federal Communications Commission, which is considering a $1 monthly tax on every U.S. phone number. GrandCentral CEO Craig Walker says the tax would make his model "economically impossible." Ironically, funds raised by the tax would go to the Universal Service Fund, which subsidizes phone service for poor households.