Kauto Huopio <huopio@lut.fi> (07/08/90)
My brother is as an exchange student in Lawton, Michigan. He has tried to call our family here at Finland via the Finland Direct service (quite equal to Svergie Direct) Our PTT has advertised these two numbers: 1-800-232-0358 via ATT 1-800-283-4652 via MCI My brother hasn't got through, at least when he did try the ATT number. He got a recorded message: "Your international call couldn't be completed" or something like that. Now I have several questions: 1) Is it true that there can bee 1-800 numbers NOT ACCESSIBLE via either ATT/MCI 2) If 1) is true, can my brother access another carrier to make the 1-800 call and does he get any additional charges on that? 3) Do these numbers work at all? (PLEASE, I don't want to get such news that 4000 telecom readers blocked the Finland Direct service just to test if it works..) Kauto, OH5LFM ****************** Kauto Huopio (huopio@kannel.lut.fi) ********************** *US Mail: Kauto Huopio, Punkkerikatu 1 A 10, SF-53850 Lappeenranta, Finland * *WARNING! We have holiday season here, so be patient with my answers.. * *****************************************************************************
covert@covert.enet.dec.com (John R. Covert 09-Jul-1990 1658) (07/10/90)
>My brother is as an exchange student in Lawton, Michigan. He has tried >to call our family here at Finland via the Finland Direct service. >Our PTT has advertised these two numbers: >1-800-232-0358 via ATT >1-800-283-4652 via MCI When I call either of these numbers, I reach a tone _in_Finland_ that I am not familiar with, but it may simply be a "please wait" tone. I suspect the problem is with the grade of service provided by the operators in Finland. The tone is roughly 500ms of 950 Hz, 250ms of 950 Hz, 1.5 sec of 1400 Hz. After a long time of no revenue due to no answer, AT&T gives up and says "Your call cannot be completed at this time in the country you are calling." On MCI it eventually times out to a reorder (120 interruptions per minute). >1) Is it true that there can bee 1-800 numbers NOT ACCESSIBLE via >either ATT/MCI Any carrier can provide 800 service, but I can verify that 232 is the AT&T prefix and 283 is the MCI prefix. >2) If 1) is true, can my brother access another carrier to make the >1-800 call and does he get any additional charges on that? No. But that wouldn't help, since the problem is obviously in Finland, and not here. >3) Do these numbers work at all? (PLEASE, I don't want to get such >news that 4000 telecom readers blocked the Finland Direct service just >to test if it works..) It may just be a matter of being patient enough to wait for the Finland Direct number to answer, though if you're put at the end of the queue of all the people in Finland calling the international operator each time you call, you may never get through. One of the main reasons for USA Direct (the first Home Country Direct service ever implemented) being established was that it often took a very long time for operators in many European countries to answer; Americans are used to operators answering in something between two and ten seconds. Your brother should probably simply call the AT&T operator and place a collect call. /john
Lars Poulsen <lars@spectrum.cmc.com> (07/10/90)
>> ["Finland Direct" from USA:] >>1-800-232-0358 via ATT >> >>1-800-283-4652 via MCI In article <9536@accuvax.nwu.edu> covert@covert.enet.dec. com (John R. Covert) writes: >When I call either of these numbers, I reach a tone _in_Finland_ that >I am not familiar with, but it may simply be a "please wait" tone. I >suspect the problem is with the grade of service provided by the >operators in Finland. The tone is roughly 500ms of 950 Hz, 250ms of >950 Hz, 1.5 sec of 1400 Hz. After a long time of no revenue due to no >answer, AT&T gives up and says "Your call cannot be completed at this >time in the country you are calling." On MCI it eventually times out >to a reorder (120 interruptions per minute). The description of the tone sounds suspiciously like the European reorder signal. It consists of three tones of a rising pitch, somewhat similar to the "Special Information Tones" used by ATT. I would expect the two access numbers to terminate in the same operator position in Helsinki, so this probably indicates a translation problem. Try calling ATT and/or MCI customer service to get them to check it out. They in turn will have a way to get to the Finnish telco operators. On a tangent: I always have problems distinguishing between busy and reorder. How did we end up with the "fast busy" and Europe with the tone triad ? What does CCITT recommend ? Lars Poulsen, SMTS Software Engineer CMC Rockwell lars@CMC.COM
huopio@lut.fi (Kauto Huopio OH5LFM) (07/12/90)
In article <9579@accuvax.nwu.edu> lars@spectrum.cmc.com (Lars Poulsen) writes: > >When I call either of these numbers, I reach a tone _in_Finland_ that > >I am not familiar with, but it may simply be a "please wait" tone. I > >suspect the problem is with the grade of service provided by the > >operators in Finland. The tone is roughly 500ms of 950 Hz, 250ms of > >950 Hz, 1.5 sec of 1400 Hz. After a long time of no revenue due to no > >answer, AT&T gives up and says "Your call cannot be completed at this > >time in the country you are calling." On MCI it eventually times out > >to a reorder (120 interruptions per minute). > The description of the tone sounds suspiciously like the European > reorder signal. It consists of three tones of a rising pitch, somewhat > similar to the "Special Information Tones" used by ATT. No, this is NOT a reorder signal. It is a queue tone!! If you have tried these numbers at, say 3pm in USA, it is around 9-11pm here. So at that time the number of international operators is VERY low, and even I may have to wait for operator about 1-2 minutes. Why do we have so few operators? Where we would need them? We have International Direct Dialing to every place in the world that has some kind of automated phone systems (Soviet Union goes okay!!), and we make quite a small number of collect calls. BTW: one other interesting telecom matter: Finnish PTT has plans to allow calls TO payphones! But they have planned to give 9700-numbers to them (Finnish Value Added Service-numbers.. Yes, we have 9800..) This means at least 50 cents/minute extra to the normal call. :-( ****************** Kauto Huopio (huopio@kannel.lut.fi) ********************** *US Mail: Kauto Huopio, Punkkerikatu 1 A 10, SF-53850 Lappeenranta, Finland * *WARNING! We have holiday season here, so be patient with my answers.. * *****************************************************************************