tad@ssc.UUCP (Tad Cook) (11/12/89)
I have a centrex question. My home is served by a 5ESS and I have 2-line "Centraflex" from US West. We have a call pickup feature, where if I have the phone for line #1 in my hand, and the phone for line #2 is ringing across the room, I can pick up the call by dialing *8. There are a couple of ways we transfer calls within the house. If I am in the basement and pick up a call for my roomate two floors up, I can do a flash-#2 to transfer it to the other line. Or, I can do a flash *9, which puts the call on hold until I go on hook, then rings it back to the SAME line, rather than transferring it to the other line. There is no difference in ringing cadence between a hold-ringback call, a transferred call, or an outside call ringing in. I ran into an interesting problem the other day. I was on line 1 talking to my mom, when a call came in, which rotated to line 2. My roomate picked it up upstairs, and then did a flash *9 and hung up. The call rang back on line 2, I ended my call with mom, and attempted a pickup with *8, but got a fast-busy reorder tone! I ran some tests, and discovered that my pickup feature doesn't work to pickup a call that is rung back with *9. This is very confusing for my roomates, who are already a bit intimidated by all the Centrex features (like it takes flash-*9 rather than just flash for call waiting on line 2!). I called telco repair, and they checked with the Centrex support staff, who said that I definately should be able to use call pickup on any ringing call. After a few days of fooling around, they reported that this was not possible, because the ringing call was not REALLY a call...it was merely an "alerting" feature whereby the CO is letting me know that I have just hung up on an on-hold call! But they never were able to point to anything specific that said you could not do this. I claimed that if this is true, then the on hold-ringback MUST have a distinctive cadence...otherwise how can anyone tell whether or not they can perform a pickup? There are a number of reasons why we want to use this for ringback. The most common is, I have used the pickup on line 2 to get a ringing call on line 1....I find out it is for someone else, but I dont want to transfer it back to line 1, lest the answering machine gets it before my roomate decides to get it. Anyone have any ideas about this? Is the telco correct about restricting call pickup, even though the ringing is not distinctive? Tad Cook tad@ssc.UUCP KT7H @ N7HFZ MCI Mail: 3288544
john@zygot.ati.com (John Higdon) (11/15/89)
In article <telecom-v09i0507m01@vector.dallas.tx.us>, tad@ssc.UUCP (Tad Cook) writes: > I ran some tests, and discovered that my pickup feature doesn't work to > pickup a call that is rung back with *9. This is very confusing for > [...] > I called telco repair, and they checked with the Centrex support > staff, who said that I definately should be able to use call pickup on > any ringing call. After a few days of fooling around, they reported > that this was not possible, because the ringing call was not REALLY a > call...it was merely an "alerting" feature whereby the CO is letting > me know that I have just hung up on an on-hold call! But they never Well, I just tried the following experiment. I dialed a supervising busy signal to simulate a call in progress. (Supervising busies are great to forward to when dealing with immediate harrassing callers, but that's another story.) Flashed the hook, dialed *9 and hung up. Phone rings. Picked up another line, dialed *8 and presto--ka-klunkplunk and I was connected to my busy. And no, it wasn't the busy you get when you *8 nothing. This appears to be a handy way to transfer calls to a line that I keep forwarded elsewhere. Just *9 the call, hang up. Pick up the forwarded line, dial *8 and there's the call. My CO switch is a wheezing 1ESS running some 1929 generic (that's a date, folks). Sounds like I don't want CommStar in a 5ESS, at least not with US West. > There are a number of reasons why we want to use this for ringback. Tell them that if Pac*Bell can do it, then their grandmother should be able to figure out how to do it :-) John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395 john@zygot.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o !
cy@pnet51.orb.mn.org (Cyril Bauer) (11/16/89)
I believe that the telco informed you correctly. The posibility of a
distinctive ring back I believes depends on the type of office.
NEC,AT&T digital, or the DMS so I can't be sure that some don't have
it. Either way I would sugest the Panasonic 616 or a 308. Start up
cost would be higher but over a period of time it would pay for itself
and you get all the flexability you could want. Ask about them. I have
one and I have had it for about three years (closer to four) and no
problems. (I have a three story house.)
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