Barton.Bruce@camb.com (Barton F. Bruce) (01/27/91)
The lack of answer supervision being passed back to the subscriber has long been a problem especially in the lodging industry. People checking out often find they are charged for unanswered calls and were not charged for brief calls. At least three companies now are marketing hardware that listens to the line and tries to determine when the call was answered. Some have gotten quite clever, and score quite well even on international calls and on calls to DID PBXes with non standard ring-back tone, etc. They can capture the SMDR record, strip its 'time', match the number dialed with what they capture watching just the actual trunks, and produce their own version of the SMDR record with correct time for the existing call accounting system to price and post to a hotel guests account. Not cheap, but they are selling well to LARGE hotels. Payback thru catching short calls frequent travelers are skilled at making can pay for the system in a few months. At smaller properties, and where there is less cheating, they may NEVER pay for themselves. Hopefully the phone companies will get around to offering answer supervision as a service one of these years. Many switches like the Mitel SX200Ds that are popular in the lodging industry can detect reverse battery on the trunks and use it as answer supervision for SMDR call timing purposes. I can BUY an SX200D for about the price of one the smaller of these add on units, so I think they are quite overpriced. If you need info, the literature I am looking at is from: Gemini Telemanagement Systems 1000 Elwell Court Palo Alto CA 94303 415.967.4610