HAMER524@ruby.vcu.edu (Robert M. Hamer) (10/24/90)
Upon dialing 800-xxx-xxxx, which is supposed to access a New Orleans
Bread and Breakfast service, the following odd behavior occurred:
1. After I dialed, I got about 11 seconds of dial tone.
2. Then, about 1 second of ringback.
3. Then, the following recording:
"Operator NR5. Your call cannot be completed as dialed. Please
try your call again or call your customer relations representative
for further assistance. This is Operator NR5."
4. The recording would repeat once, and then I would hear what sounded
like a reorder tone.
Further experimentation, i.e., calling several times so that I could
get the recording down verbatim, elicited the following variations:
a. The ringback at step 2 varied from perhaps 1 to 3 seconds.
b. The recording would sometimes cut off in the middle of its second
repeat before going to the reorder tone.
And of course, my use of dial tone, ringback, reorder tone should be
construed to mean that they sounded like those to me.
Anyone know (a) what LD company 800-xxx is, and (b) why a dial tone
after the dial and before the ringback, and (c) in general, any
guesses as to what is going on?
[Moderator's Note: Blame me for the 'xxx' entries above where the
actual number was printed when the message arrived. What I found was
that the number is not a 'bed and breakfast service' but is actually a
gateway or dialup to some company's private internal network. The dial
tone you heard was the internal dialtone from the company switch. Had
you experimented further, you would have found that punching various
buttons on your touch tone phone would have *broken* the dial tone and
connected you internally. Some of the dialable combinations in fact
were outgoing WATS lines, FX lines (themselves extending new dial tone
from somewhere far away), etc. You apparently were expecting
something else, and thus overlooked the obvious answer to why would a
line be answered by extending dial tone. I am being purposely vague,
and hope you understand why I'm not going to print the number here so
that 30,000+ readers can try it out Thursday and Friday. Re the 'bed
and breakfast service', I guess they must have some other number,
unless they are out of business, etc. PAT]