[VoiceOps] Letting a phone ring forever?

[Mark R Lindsey]

On Jul 26, 2011, at 2:57 PM, Carlos Alvarez wrote:
> Scott Berkman wrote:
>> 
>> Not to mention there isn't a sane human in the world that will stay on the
>> line for 5 minutes when the line is just ringing and ringing.  Way before
>> that time they'll hang up and try your customer's competitor, who probably
>> has an AA that answers immediately.
> 
> This of course is the most important thing; the human part.  

Scott, you're thinking about a very narrow range of telephony users.

Carlos, your premise is valid, but it's too easy just to call the customer crazy and dismiss this type of request. There are good reasons you might want to sound an alarm at a distant location, and get positive acknowledgment when that alarm has been answered.

-> Report of a fire in some division of a factory; contact the fire chief

-> Place an urgent order that must take precedence over all others. E.g., gas up the helicopter immediately because we have a human organ to deliver

-> Contact a security guard to escort an important visitor around the secure area.

On some traditional telephone switches, such as the DMS100 or 1AESS, you can in fact make calls that ring forever, at least if both legs of the call are on the same switch. And, in fact, some businesses have business processes depending on this feature.

And I suspect you could accomplish the same within most VoIP platforms by either (a) adjusting timers, or (b) sending periodic SIP provisional responses, such as the SIP 182 response, to keep the early-dialog active. Or (c) make creative use of a Call Center feature to keep the calling user in a queue, but continue to send new call attempts to the same destination Call Center Agent until that user answers.

But this all suggests another question: is there a better way to get the job done than just using a traditional phone call?

mark at ecg.co  |  +1-229-316-0013  |  http://ecg.co/lindsey