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From: cos@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu (Ofer Inbar)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Odd (617) Number
Message-ID: <14242@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 2 Nov 90 01:27:20 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 782, Message 6 of 10


In article <14065@accuvax.nwu.edu> zippy@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu
(Patrick Tufts) writes:

[describes dialing a phone number, hoping to 'find his own number']

>The response: three quick chirps and a faint hum of electronics
>waiting for something.  After a pause, I got a quick busy signal.
 ...

>BTW - I got the same response with the same number from another phone.

This is the standard behavior for electronic pager numbers.  Each
pager number is associated with one pager, and dialing that number
causes the person carrying that pager to be paged.

Since the computer at the other end paused for a while, and seemed to
be 'waiting for something,' it was probably connected to a display
pager.  If you had punched in some numbers from you DTMF pad while it
was waiting, those numbers would have appeared on the pager when it
beeped.  The purpose of these is so you can inform the person who is
on call what phone number you want him/her to call back on.

I have one of these pagers, though the number you dialed was not mine
(mine is an 800); you may however have paged someone, who probably had
no idea what he/she was being paged for.

  --  Cos (Ofer Inbar)  --  cos@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu
  --  WBRS (BRiS)  --  WBRS@binah.cc.brandeis.edu  WBRS@brandeis.bitnet