atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums General General Telephone & Systems Information System Group Hunt and local CO

When a system's Group Hunt feature is activated is it necessary for the local phone company CO to be active in the process, and if yes, what is the involvement.

Two separate animals, ones internal the other is external.
Bill

Typically a pbx/key hunt group allows for more than one call to be recived on the internal number . The handoff from telco is the same as any other non hunt group call .

hunting for CO lines is from the telco. Hunting to phone extentions as I believe you are referring to if through the phone switch internally as Bill said. What are you actually trying to do?

Yeah, you're going to need to give us a little more info. Let us know if you have copper lines or T1/PRI.

Lines are copper, brought to the truck (mobile TV truck) by the local CO. We patch them into our system.

The system did not hunt today. I was able to make it work but that was without full knowledge of the system.

I am looking for an explanation of how the system works. Does the telephone company have any input in the the hunting of my local system?

The answer is yes and no . Ed has more eloquent key board skills than myself , so I hope he chimes in . If you have a DID number riding on a pri/t1 the hunting is within the pbx . If you have copper gs/ls trunks ringing an internal hunt group the hunting is within the CO . I hope this helps .

CO line hunting is ALWAYS, repeat ALWAYS a telco feature on traditional copper (POTS) lines. Please always remember this and never let anyone tell you otherwise. A way to remember this is that they charge a monthly fee for this feature in most areas, just like call waiting or caller ID.

It is NEVER a feature that a standard key system can offer; it just simply can't be done, regardless of the manfuacturer of the system or the local telco.

You see, if a line is engaged on a call, the line is just busy, period. Once it's tied up, your system doesn't have any way of knowing about other calls trying to come in. This is because the telco is just telling callers of this through a busy signal. The door is simply locked once the first call is taken on that line unless alternate arrangements are made.

Imagine that the telco central office switch is your receptionist. This person knows you are on the phone. They aren't going to send you another call unless they are told that it's OK to do so. Otherwise, they are going to reject the subsequent callers.

No offense intended if this is too simplistic of an analogy, but it was the best that I could come up with late at night.

If the telco is told to, and paid to do so, they can program their switch to be that "receptionist" and sense that the first line is busy and bounce the next call to another POTS line, A.K.A. an alternate path into your system for the subsequent call, referred to has hunting.

This day and age of telco voice mail service has further complicated this misconception about "lines". People don't understand why if they have a private line and a voice mail system at their location, then can't their voice mail answer subsequent calls on the private line when it's busy? No, it can't because the LINE is busy, not the number. People translate phone numbers as phone lines, and that's not how it works anymore. At least since the 1970's anyway.

A "line" is a pair of wires carrying a single telephone call. When that's happening, that's all that the pair of wires can do. A phone number nowadays is more of a pointing tool; it can be told to select alternate routes to permit more than one call to it at a time.

The use of POTS lines in the United States is still very much the norm, and represents more than 70% of today's typical users. Other technologies are out there that allow more flexibility, but people are under that misconception that they can get them through POTS lines. Some features, yes, but most, NO. POTS lines are good for one call at a time, period. (OK, yes, there is the possibility of call waiting, but for all intensive purposes...)

The hunting feature on the system in your truck has absolutely, positively no way of providing CO line hunting. If it has a hunting feature, rest assured that as previous posts have indicated, this applies for station to station calling, as in intercom calls. I don't even know what system you have but I can make this statement on CO line hunting with 100% confidence.

Sorry that you simply asked for the time and I told you how to build the watch, but this question comes up daily in my office. I just figured that it's about time that I put the answer to this question in writing for my staff to use, and at the same time, maybe others may benefit.

Think of a phone line as a pair of railroad tracks. Only 1 train can travel down the tracks,period. No if ands or buts. Think of the telco provider as the railroad yard, if you want a second train to be able to travel to you it will need its own set of tracks. Once you get the trains into your own little railyard you have options such as voicemail and so on.

Please don't be offended by the simplistic nature in which the things are explained. No insults are intended there are just numerous techs that each has his own way of trying to explain.

Let me thank you all for the time you took in answering my question. This information will allow me to stop chasing my tail when the system fails and just call the local CO to get it fixed. It is always a good thing to have the pressure of repair put on anothers shoulders.

Anthony