Help me better understand phone errors

I was a cold caller a while back with a phone and phone book. Ive gotten a few errors and to this day wonder what they mean.

The fast busy. I know a slow busy means busy, but its my experience if you dial a fast busy number a few months in a row you get the message it is not in service, disconnected or your call cen not be completed as dialed. A fast busy in my experience with cell means the cell tower is busy.

Your call can not be completed as dialed. I get this when dialing a known disconnected number at times. Also if I take too long to finish dialing a number or mis dial a digit by leaving it out. I can see getting this error if I dial too few numbers or wait too long, but why when calling a disconnected number?

This number has been temporarly disconnected, please try your call again. Of course dialing it again does nothing but plays the same message. In some cases it works a month or so later, other times it goes to a disconnected message. Did someone forget to pay their bill and the phone company is going to give them a break?

This number has been disconnect or is out of service, please dial your number again. The phone company is unsure if a number is disconnected or not in service? If either are true, how is dialing the number again going to solve anything? Good thing my phone had a screen that showed rather or not I dialed the number I wanted to dial.

This line is for outgoing calls only. Huh? I can get a line for outgoing calls only?

Then there are some where it rings a few times, you hear a computer type ring with multiple fast beeps a few times, then a beep like to leave a message for VM or something and the line goes dead?

Lastly, some error message sound professional and clear. Others sounded like they were recorded by Jeff Foxworthy standing along the edge of a highway. Sometimes the tones played for a number that has been disconnected are dead on, other times they are echoed or off key. Some numbers like in Georgia have a severe echo or a delay.

Just wondering a lot lately......

A fast busy usually means all outbound trunks in the building or the central office's area are busy. Whenever there's a major news event on TV, it tends to cause fast-busies because everyone picks up their phone at the same time to call home to talk about it.

Your call can not be completed as dialed. I get this when dialing a known disconnected number at times. Also if I take too long to finish dialing a number or mis dial a digit by leaving it out. I can see getting this error if I dial too few numbers or wait too long, but why when calling a disconnected number?

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If a disconnected number is simply pulled out of the telco's switch and no intercept message is set up, that's what you get.

This number has been temporarly disconnected, please try your call again. Of course dialing it again does nothing but plays the same message. In some cases it works a month or so later, other times it goes to a disconnected message. Did someone forget to pay their bill and the phone company is going to give them a break?

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Frequently that means a late bill payment, but sometimes it's a seasonal or vacation disconnect, where the resident plans to return a few weeks or months later. You could frequently get this when calling a military person who's deployed overseas.

This number has been disconnect or is out of service, please dial your number again. The phone company is unsure if a number is disconnected or not in service? If either are true, how is dialing the number again going to solve anything? Good thing my phone had a screen that showed rather or not I dialed the number I wanted to dial.

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Sometimes it's easier to send all non-routable calls into a single intercept bucket. :shrug:

This line is for outgoing calls only. Huh? I can get a line for outgoing calls only?

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Yes, a line can be set up as outbound only in order to maximize outbound capacity.

Then there are some where it rings a few times, you hear a computer type ring with multiple fast beeps a few times, then a beep like to leave a message for VM or something and the line goes dead?

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Could be a sloppy attempt at call-forwarding, maybe a "find me" hunt pattern that ends up at an inactive VOIP number.

Lastly, some error message sound professional and clear. Others sounded like they were recorded by Jeff Foxworthy standing along the edge of a highway. Sometimes the tones played for a number that has been disconnected are dead on, other times they are echoed or off key. Some numbers like in Georgia have a severe echo or a delay.

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I recently ran across an intercept message where the announcer sounds like Homer Simpson. Sometimes these messages have to be created on-the-fly in a noisy switch room by whomever hapens to be there at the time. I've had to record those myself on occasion. As far as the SIT tones being off-key, those are probably a tape-recorded version as opposed to those that are produced electronically in real time.

The echo probably comes from long-haul T-1 lines that don't have echo cancellers but need them.

Here is a spiffy collection of modern and "classic" telephone sounds along with their explanations. You'll see that the official name for that fast-busy is a "reorder tone." Enjoy!

I was just going to say a fast busy means essentially "all circuits are busy right now", but I see PW beat me to the punch.

The number that rings and beeps three times then silence can be a pager number. If you enter your numeric message and press the pound "#" key, you will hear a beep and a voice should say something along the lines of "message sent".

-Bill

Let's see, what can I add?????

The reorder (fast busy) means that some place along the line can not route your call. A typical interstate phone call goes through at least 4 switching systems. If there are no lines between any of the 4, the call does not go through and you get reorder.

Some special phone numbers have artificial limits on how many calls can reach it at once. This is call throttling, and used for talk show call in lines and such. The urban legend was that when direct dialing was first introduced the network was clogged for hours when Frank Sinatra announced he was playing Vegas live for the first time and you could call to order tickets. Now each office allows only a few calls to certain numbers. The rest get a busy, reorder or recording (local rules by company).

The lousy sounding recordings? Some of them are recorded from a cassette tape that is passed around from office to office. For about 3 years you could hear my voice when a call from Monterey County California was mis-dialed. The tape was too garbled to understand when then RA (recorded announcment) was updated. We'd already blown the old recording away, so I had to inprovise.

"Cannot complete your call as dialed" recording. You can also get that if you dial an invalid phone number. 30 years ago there were many combinations that were not valid. The area code 777, for instance, did not exist.

The multi beep followed by a tone is frequently a test line. The beeps and tones are used by the phone company to auto-magically test the quality of the lines. Other devices will auto route to a fax or modem based on what it hears after connecting. They listen for a fax machine, then emulate a modem handshake If neither of those work, it rings the phone. Cleaver.

Wow, thanks. I will try to keep these in mind if I do that type of work again. I think I had a pager with VM before and it had some announcement to enter your number or leave a message or both.

BTW, I would remove anyone from the list if they were not interested. THey had to say that, hanging up, saying just not interested at this time or putting me on hold, transferring me to the fax machine wouldnt cut it. At least at my bosses orders, I really hate to disturbe anyone, but it works. 1 out of 6 calls lead to something sale or service.