Partner ACS and CO Call Waiting 1

[Robotic]

I have a Partner ACS R6 and PVM R3 for my two phone lines in my house. I have four 18D phones and two analog phones. One of those is piggy-backed into an 18D.

We subscribe to SBC's Call Waiting on line 1. After having read the relevant R6 manual sections several times, I can't tell if the Partner 'does' Real call waiting or not.

As I see it I have three choices:
1) Call SBC and drop Call Waiting and join my two lines into a Hunt group. Any idea/experience about how much that costs?

2) I could drop Call Waiting and subscribe to the "Call Forward on Busy" feature described in this forum by a previous post. But then a second voice call would come in on line 2 and go to the fax machine by mistake. (I have CNG fax detection enabled on line 1 for faxes arriving on the wrong line) Unless absolutely necessary, I don't want to manually forward to the fax machine using a Fax Management button. Many of our faxes arrive when we are not here.

3) Figure out how to use Call Waiting on my ACS system.

Any suggestions greatly appreciated.

Rob

 

[392]

Recall will place a precision timed 450 msec flash hook on the CO line in use to swap call waiting parties. If 450 msec is not long enough, adjust it using #107 to ~750 msec and retry. Place a recall button on the sets under an empty button as a Feature 03, or just dial Feature 03 to use it.

 

[drewmich]

Probably the easier solution would be to have SBC drop the "call Waiting" on line 1 and then have SBC setup your 2 lines to "rollover" or hunt to each other if one is busy. If you give out your 2nd line # and you get 2 calls in on it at the same time ... the 2nd call rings busy in the present CSC "call waiting" config. Wouldn't be an issue if you don't publish the 2nd line #, but with caller ID nowdays used by many companies, a caller might return a call to that 2nd # if you called them on it.

Fax detection problems shouldn't normally occur on the ACS system unless the incoming call has the attached fax tone signal. If you're have problems with voice calls triggering the fax detection signal on the ACS processor, you have to address that separate from your main issue - SBC Call Waiting.

If you are paying business local rates with SBC, there should be a charge to route calls from one line to another if the called line is busy. If you are still getting a significant # of busy line compaints from your customers, I suggest just adding a third line to your ACS switch. For $25.00+/-, it seems like a good investment to eliminate those complaints.

Andrew Roach
President - Drew Telecom Group, Inc.
Lucent Voice Mail-Component-Transtalk Repair Specialists
Lucent/Avaya Telecom Brokers/Resellers
drew@triton.net
269-685-5400 - voice
269-685-5500 - fax

 

[jlshelton]

We pay about $1.00 a month for residential hunting in SBC California. It is tarrifed, but most reps don't know about it, so you have to be persistent and ask for a supervisor. Hunting differs from any of the call forwarding options in that you can only hunt to other numbers served by the same equipment. Originally, hunting was just done mechanically in the step-by-step switches to the next sequential number, but obviously we've progressed a bit. We actually have both residential lines hunt to each other.

 

[Robotic]

Thanks for the helpful information in your posts. The information from "392" was really the solution for me. I programmed all my 18D phones to have F03 (Return) on a button. This led me back to the manual, where I discovered how to use Call Waiting on the analog phone as well. (Flash-(intercom dial tone)-#03). Somewhat clunky but it works.

I tested by calling in on two cell phones, and Call Waiting is now working! (It's the little things in life...)

Note to jlshelton: remember to vote for Arnie on Tuesday!!

 

[kristiandg]

If the analog phones have some kind of speed dial, you could program the "RECALL" feature code into them and essentially just hit a button to execute the feature.

Kris