tom@pdx.mentor.com (Tom Ace) (07/14/89)
There was some discussion here a while ago about ringback numbers; I found another way to get my phone to ring when I lived in NY City (Chelsea area) back in 1980. It depended on the way that NY Telephone processed local calls preceded by your own area code; evidently, they went through some other path than calls dialed with 7 digits. If I dialed my own area code followed by my own number (i.e, 212-929-0110), I'd hear both a ringback tone, and a call-waiting tone to tell me "another" call was coming in. I'd then hang up, and the phone would ring once. Obviously, I had to have call-waiting to make this possible; it may also have depended on my having three-way calling. Without three-way calling, I suspect the call would've been killed quickly after I hung up. With three-way calling, the connection was maintained for some timeout period, to determine whether I'd really hung up, or whether it was a hook flash. It was during that period that my phone would ring. Dialing one's own number without the 212 first gave an immediate busy signal. Evidently, dialing a 212 first sent you out of the switch and back in on another path. Calls preceded by the 212 code took an extra 2 seconds or so to complete, during which you'd hear some whirring/clicking noises. When NY Telephone went to "one plus" dialing in 1980, this still worked, but of course I had to dial 1-212-929-0110. I moved out of NY in 1981, and have no idea if this still works there. (No other area I've lived in was set up to complete calls which were dialed starting with the local area code.) Tom Ace tom@sje.mentor.com ...!mntgfx!sje!tom