letting it ring? (UNCLASSIFIED) [telecom]

C'mon, 98% of people who have been brainwas.... trained to use phones have a Pavlovian urge to answer any ringing phone.

With the way technology is set up these days (answering machines, diversions etc.) and people's general impatience it must be a rare thing these days for a call to time-out ringing.

Per David Clayton:

I find that's part of the flaw in the logic of "screening calls" via an answering machine.

The tension involved in waiting out four rings, sitting through the announcement, and then listening for the voice on the other end seems to outweigh just picking the thing up and answering it.

Right now, my incoming is still POTS, but if/when I ever transition to 100% VOIP I think I'll shop for a provider that enables something like this:

- Somebody places a call to my number

- VOIP provider answers the phone with a recorded message: "Press 1 for Sue, press 2 for Joe, press 3 for Sam, press 4 for Jane, press 5 for Sally, press 6 for Will, press 7 for Irving, press 8 for Menachim, press 9 for Pete".

- I'm Pete and nobody else exists.

- If, and only if, somebody presses "9", my phone rings. Anything else, and the other end gets an extended message - anything... mainly to drive up the costs of telemarketers... but preferably number-specific to preserve the illusion that they really are leaving a message for Sue, Joe, or whoever.

- My regular callers learn to just hit "9" as soon as they are connected - so they get an immediate ring and don't hear any message.

- If I'm not there, my answering machine kicks in just like it does now and legit callers can leave a message.

It may sound convoluted, but it seems to me like that should eliminate most all junk calls, especially the ones where they leave messages - at least until the practice becomes widespread and the robo-dialers get programmed to hit random numbers in search of a ring....

The point is that the caller holds his place in the incoming queue and [at least in the case of a POTS call] the caller does not get charged for the ring time.

I'm sure I recall reading that Western Electric (Bell) engineers devoted some research and effort into creating a ring sound that impelled the recipient to pick up the phone.

Not so much with the electronic warbles we get nowadays... in klezmer music (Jewish party music of the last century), one often finds clarinet players making a sound that (80 years ahead of its time) is just like an electronic ringer.

Dave

***** Moderator's Note *****

I'll never forget the first time that I heard a piezoelectric ringer on a cell-phone: I knew, right that instant, that it would soon be worked into TV commercials. I was right.

Bill Horne Moderator

Correct, but in this day and age of instant gratification who still has the patience to let our call ring and ring until it gets NU tone?

Most of us would give up after 30 or 40 seconds these days because we do expect *something* to answer!

The answering machine is set to answer after 4, 5, or 6 rings, depending on how long you give yourself to get to a phone, when you're NOT screening calls. It's set to answer immediately or 1 ring when you are screening calls.

***** Moderator's Note *****

To change the number of rings on my machine, I have to wade through a complicated setup menu, so that doesn't happen. If I don't want to get calls, I unplug my phone.

Bill Horne Moderator

Can't the above be accomplished with a plug-in card and software on a PC? That is, can't a PC be used as a mini-PBX or mini-voice-mail, and

9 would ring your real phone for you to answer whle all other selections would go to voice mail or dead air? ***** Moderator's Note *****

There used to be combined modem/voice mail cards that would do that, but they required dedicated software and the companies died before consumers realized that they would want the product. AFAIK, they're not made anymore, but I'd be happy to hear from anyone who knows otherwise.

Bill Horne Moderator

The standard cheap PBX these days is Asterisk, which runs under Linux. Many people use it just to switch VoIP, but you should be able to plug an ATA (POTS to Ethernet terminal adapter) or two into your LAN and have Asterisk manage them.

You can also get analog line cards for your PC but they run about $500 and up depending on the number of lines and the features.

R's, John

There's the Ovolab Phlink product..

But it is for Mac OSX only, and it seems to be on autopilot now-a-days.. :( Last release wwas Aug 2008.

Otherwise, you can setup what you are describing with Asterisk, or its offshoots. There is even some basic hardware with Asterisk builtin with some GUIs on the front (ie. Fortinet has a Fortigate firewall and voice package that is essentially Asterisk on the backend).

Cisco also has a SOHO/SMB solution for setting up a small PBX type setup with their UC products (ie. UC320/UC500).

Asterisk is probably the best bet/most cost effective, although you'll probably have to devote an (old) PC to it and some add-on cards.

I used to use Dialogic cards years ago for PC based Voice Mail systems with analog line connections, they still seem to be available (don't know the cost, though):