An automatic number announcement circuit (ANAC) is a component of a central office of a telephone company that provides a service to installation and service technicians to determine the telephone number of a telephone line. The facility has a telephone number that may be called to listen to an automatic announcement that includes the caller's telephone number. The ANAC facility is useful primarily during the installation of landline telephones to quickly identify one of multiple wire pairs in a bundle or at a termination point.
A radiotelephone, abbreviated RT, is a radio communication system for conducting a conversation; radiotelephony means telephony by radio. It is in contrast to radiotelegraphy, which is radio transmission of telegrams (messages), or television, transmission of moving pictures and sound. The term is related to radio broadcasting, which transmit audio one way to listeners. Radiotelephony refers specifically to two-way radio systems for bidirectional person-to-person voice communication between separated users, such as CB radio or marine radio. In spite of the name, radiotelephony systems are not necessarily connected to or have anything to do with the telephone network, and in some radio services, including GMRS, interconnection is prohibited.
Premium-rate telephone numbers are telephone numbers that charge callers higher price rates for select services, including information and entertainment. A portion of the call fees is paid to the service provider, allowing premium calls to be an additional source of revenue for businesses. Tech support, psychic hotlines, and adult chat lines are among the most popular kinds of premium-rate phone services. Other services include directory enquiries, weather forecasts, competitions and ratings televoting. Some businesses, e.g. low-cost airlines, and diplomatic missions, such as the US Embassy in London or the UK Embassy in Washington, have also used premium-rate phone numbers for calls from the general public.
A busy signal in telephony is an audible call-progress tone or audible signal to the calling party that indicates failure to complete the requested connection of that particular telephone call.
Operator assistance refers to service provided by a telephone operator to the calling party of a telephone call. This can include telephone calls made from pay phones, calls placed station-to-station, person-to-person, or collect, third-number calls, calls billed to credit cards, and certain international calls which cannot be dialed directly. The telephone operator may also be able to assist with determining what kind of technical difficulties are occurring on a phone line, to verify whether a line is busy, or left off the hook, or to break in on a live call to ask the caller to clear the line for an incoming call. The latter service is often utilized by emergency police. In addition, operators are often a first point of contact for the elderly wanting information on the current date and time.
A telephone call or telephone conversation, also known as a phone call or voice call, is a connection over a telephone network between the called party and the calling party. Telephone calls started in the late 19th century. As technology has improved, a majority of telephone calls are made over a cellular network through mobile phones or over the internet with Voice over IP. Telephone calls are typically used for real-time conversation between two or more parties, especially when the parties cannot meet in person.
A toll-free telephone number or freephone number is a telephone number that is billed for all arriving calls. For the calling party, a call to a toll-free number from a landline is free of charge. A toll-free number is identified by a dialing prefix similar to an area code. The specific service access varies by country.
Call forwarding, or call diversion, is a telephony feature of all telephone switching systems which redirects a telephone call to another destination, which may be, for example, a mobile or another telephone number where the desired called party is available. Call forwarding was invented by Ernest J. Bonanno.
A telephone numbering plan is a type of numbering scheme used in telecommunication to assign telephone numbers to subscriber telephones or other telephony endpoints. Telephone numbers are the addresses of participants in a telephone network, reachable by a system of destination code routing. Telephone numbering plans are defined in each of the administrative regions of the public switched telephone network (PSTN) and in private telephone networks.
Phone fraud, or more generally communications fraud, is the use of telecommunications products or services with the intention of illegally acquiring money from, or failing to pay, a telecommunication company or its customers.
In the United Kingdom, telephone numbers are administered by the Office of Communications (Ofcom). For this purpose, Ofcom established a telephone numbering plan, known as the National Telephone Numbering Plan, which is the system for assigning telephone numbers to subscriber stations.
A business telephone system is a telephone system typically used in business environments, encompassing the range of technology from the key telephone system (KTS) to the private branch exchange (PBX).
Telephone numbers in Hong Kong are mostly eight-digit. Fixed land line numbers start with 2 or 3, mobile (cellular) phone numbers with 4, 5, 6, 7 or 9, pager numbers with 7 and forwarding service with 8. Since the end of 1989, there have been no area codes within Hong Kong.
Music on hold (MOH) is the business practice of playing recorded music to fill the silence that would be heard by telephone callers who have been placed on hold. It is especially common in situations involving customer service.
Numbers on the Irish telephone numbering plan are regulated and assigned to operators by ComReg.
A choke exchange is a telephone exchange designed to handle many simultaneous call attempts to telephone numbers of that exchange. Choke exchanges are typically used to service telephone numbers of talk radio caller and contest lines of radio stations and event ticket vendors.
National conventions for writing telephone numbers vary by country. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) publishes a recommendation entitled Notation for national and international telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and Web addresses. Recommendation E.123 specifies the format of telephone numbers assigned to telephones and similar communication endpoints in national telephone numbering plans.
A telephone number is a sequence of digits assigned to a landline telephone subscriber station connected to a telephone line or to a wireless electronic telephony device, such as a radio telephone or a mobile telephone, or to other devices for data transmission via the public switched telephone network (PSTN), or other public and private networks. Modern smart phones have added a built-in layer of abstraction whereby individuals or businesses are saved into a contacts application and the numbers no longer have to be written down or memorized.
Full service is a type of radio format; the format is characterized by a mix of music programming and a large amount of locally-produced and hyperlocal programming, such as news and discussion focusing on local issues, sports coverage, and other forms of paid religious and brokered content.
In telephony, beep lines were improvised conference calls hosted over busy signals, loop-around test tones, or certain automated informational service numbers, active in the United States from the mid-1950s to the mid-1980s. These lines allowed callers to communicate with up to dozens of other people simultaneously, the conversations often punctuated by the busy tone "beep" and accompanying intercept message. Such lines were a consequence of the electromechanical nature of switching equipment within the central offices of the public switched telephone network in widespread use at the time. Some journalists have perceived beep lines as an early form of social media.
