winter@apple.com (Patty Winter) (08/29/89)
With all of this discussion about AOSs (and while I'm writing nasty
letters to the three Arizona hotels I stayed in recently :-) ), could
someone please explain to me exactly where AOSs are in the sequence
of a telephone call?
I presume that when I make a long-distance call from a hotel, the
call goes straight through the hotel switchboard and out to the AOS.
How am I doing so far? Are the AOSs necessarily local, or might the
call go a ways even before it heads for the recipient?
Then, how does it get from the AOS to the callee? I presume that
the AOS somehow routes it to one of the standard LD carriers. Does
each AOS use one particular carrier, or might they choose from
all of them depending on the distance the call needs to go, time
of day, etc.?
Thanks!
Patty Winter N6BIS INTERNET: winter@apple.com
AMPR.ORG: [44.4.0.44] UUCP: {decwrl,nsc,sun}!apple!winterpdg@chinet.chi.il.us (Paul Guthrie) (09/01/89)
>With all of this discussion about AOSs (and while I'm writing nasty >letters to the three Arizona hotels I stayed in recently :-) ), could >someone please explain to me exactly where AOSs are in the sequence >of a telephone call? AOSs are (as you supposed) somewhere afterr the hotels PBX. There are many different methods of accessing AOSs, so I will only list the main ones. 1) Presubscribed lines. The AOS has to have a CIC, and have the BOC presubscribe the lines for the PBX to that CIC. This requires that the AOS have FGD trunks, and that either the AOS also carry 1+ traffic, or the PBX sends 1+ and 0-,0+ out on different trunks. 2) Speed dial. Some PBXs can do speed dialing and therefor insert a casual call code (10 + CIC) before the 0- or 0+ number, or some can even insert a FGB (950-{0,1} + CIC) code, + auth code before the dialed number. 3) Dialers. For AOSs without FGDs or on hotels with dumb PBXs, smart "dialers" must be inserted on the outgoing operator lines from the PBX. These beasts are normally manufactured by companies such as Mitel, CTI , Micro Devices, etc. They can trap incoming digits, outdial the necessary codes to access the AOS, and then outdial the original dialed digits. They are usually smart enough to even change around casual call codes (such as 10288 or whatever) and still dial the AOS. Some can even provide the "bong" tone, accept credit card numbers, and dial out 1+, all without AOS intervention. These things have zillions of features, including Time of Day routing to a least cost carrier, full tone sense (including energy detect for voice, SIT tones, etc), screening tables for NPA+COC, so the AOS can instanly dump to AT&T traffic that would be unbillable (due to not having billing arrangements with] independants), etc. Because of the sophistication of these devices, often the AOS is reached via calling a 1-800 number which acts like a feature group B, so that the AOS need not be local (most AOSs just have one or two operator centres). These are generally programmable either via modem or DTMF tones, and the ones that store CC info must be able to offload the SMDR information. The dialers also have the ability to "splash" back calls on receipt of a particular tone, giving a remote AOS the ability to make sure that the caller gets a *local* operator if required, or *local* 911. The dialer simply hangs up and dials out directly a code sequence (e.g.911,0,00,etc) depending on splash sequence. The AOSs generally do not have the LD network to be able to route their own calls, so they use other LD carriers, often using least cost routing depending on time of day and destination. Because they buy in bulk, their LD costs are lower than an average subscribers on a per second basis, giving them some profit margin even before their higher prices. -- Paul Guthrie chinet!nsacray!paul