Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!lll-winken!telecom-request From: motcid!king@uunet.uu.net (Steven King) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Front Door to Apartment Phone Service Message-ID: Date: 20 Mar 91 20:55:53 GMT Sender: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Organization: Motorola Inc. - Cellular Infrastructure Div., Arlington Hgts, IL Lines: 38 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 220, Message 4 of 10 Pat, you forgot to mention the downside of the {E,I}nterphone. (Warning: Anecdote Alert!) A friend of mine had been sent overseas on business for a month or so. After he got back I was going to stop over to say "hi" to him one Saturday morning. I got there, and buzzed his apartment. Well, unbeknownst to me at the time the intercom was an Interphone arrangement, the type that doesn't interrupt calls in progress. He had a data call up you see, catching up on a month's worth of email and news ... all I got was a busy tone! Luckily his second-floor apartment had a window that was literally a stone's throw from the ground. The call-interruption flavor wouldn't have helped much either. Call waiting would have kicked in and knocked him off the modem (assuming that it can't be cancelled with *70 or something, in which case he would have cancelled it). The modem would have put the line back on-hook. Would the phone ring in such a situation? If so, no problem. Otherwise my friend would have cursed the demon-spawn named Line Noise and simply redialed before I could try again! No, give me an honest-to-god dedicated intercom any day. Better yet, give me a dwelling place free of these !#$%^# modern "conveniences"! Steven King, Motorola Cellular (...uunet!motcid!king) [Moderator's Note: By definition, I/Enterphone WILL interrupt a call in progress. That is the way it is built. Any other unit which does not actually seize the pair (relying on dialing in) is an imposter if it is called I/Enterphone. And no, *70 will not block call-waiting in the case of a front door call, since again the unit does not look to see what the CO is doing other than if the line (or rather, the pair) is engaged then it submits its own call-waiting tone. Yes, a person on a modem would get cut off. That is one reason I have two lines here; one for mostly modem use, with no call-waiting on the line, period. PAT]