lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein) (09/24/86)
As I understand the current situation, unless a non-ATT carrier has equal access (or a special "answering supervision" feature package, the details of which I won't go into here) in the TERMINATING central office for a call, they are unable to positively identify supervision status. The letter from MCI says they don't start timing after a certain number of rings or interval of time. But they didn't mention the OTHER technique some non-ATT carriers use--trying to watch the path to detect when non-recurring audio (e.g. speech) begins. As anyone who has tried to do this will tell you, it is tricky at best. And of course you'll be fooled by intercept operators and recordings. I'm not saying that this is what MCI is using--but given their statement about a "highly sophisticated" means of detecting when a call is answered, it sounds like they might be using this for termination in non-supervision central offices. After all, true answering supervision status, when properly handled, isn't "highly sophisticated" at all--but it works. --Lauren--