noninteractive setting not respected in libvpb0

[Craig Sawyer]

In Ubuntu 9.10 package: libvpb0 (which is installed when installing asterisk), if using
DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive apt-get --yes install asterisk

package libvpb0 starts up a whiptail process: whiiptail --backtitle Package configuration --title Configuring libvpb0 --output-fd 12 --nocancel --inputbox -- Configure locale specific options for Voicetronix hardware.??Enter your ITU-T telephone code (eg. 61 for Australia, 33 for France): 10 75 61

Which requires user interaction (which is difficult to do from a background process)

details:
1) Ubunto 9.10
2) libvpb0: 4.2.42-1ubuntu1
3) did not expect requirement of user interaction.
4) whiptail started, and required user interaction.