kaplanr@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu (Robert Kaplan) (08/26/90)
A friend (really!) of mine added the SIT tones to the start of his answering machine message a few weeks ago. I've spent some time calling his machine from various COCOTs to see what their response is. None has kept my quarter. Most of them spit the quarter right back as soon as they hear the tones...but none let you maintain the connection indefinitely. A couple have let me stay on the line long enough to leave a message, and one cut off my voice path as soon as it heard the tones. All this talk of SIT tones in lieu of answer supervision leads me to wonder: How does my university PBX (a Northern telecom SL-1) know not to bill me if I call an out-of-service number? Can it assume that I can hear the new number within the 42 uncharged seconds it gives me? Or does it, too, listen for SIT tones and stop billing if it hears them? You may draw your own conclusions ... I'd never want to defraud *any* beast, COCOT or PBX, that won't do 10xxx dialing, etc, etc... Scott Fybush / kaplanr@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu