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From: yazz@devnet.la.locus.com (Bob Yasi)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Knowing You're a Call Waiting Beep
Message-ID: <10716@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 11 Aug 90 07:42:01 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 559, Message 12 of 12


My home phone in San Diego, 619/581-xxxx, is on a Northern Telecom DMS
II switch; I'm unsure of the software revision.  Until just about a
week ago, a caller could tell whether he was causing a call waiting
beep or not by the sound of the ring.  (BTW, please feel free to
correct my terminology.)  A normal "ring cycle" begins with two
seconds of ring tone followed by three seconds of silence (and
repeats).  If you are the cause of a call waiting beep you came in
half way thru the ring so the first ring you hear seems to cut off
early.  I have two lines in my home and tested this extensively and
have just noticed that this behavior has stopped -- now there is no
difference.

I've noticed the same thing at my sister's house in Mass.,
617/289-xxxx, (which I suspect is a DMS II prefix also since a call
waiting beep doesn't "ker-chunk" at you like ESS does) but I didn't
test it enough to be confident of the behavior.

Does anyone have any more information about the disappearance of this
undocumented feature?  (One humorously paranoid friend ventured that
it meant my phone is being tapped but that seems pretty silly to me.)

Surely there will be some opinions about this feature too; I like it
and miss it myself.

Since I'm new to the net, I wonder if the archives have any
discussions of DMS II CO equipment versus ESS and other stuff.


[Moderator's Note: I do not think there are any specific items in the
Telecom Archives on this specific topic.   PT]