sundance-communications.com/forum Forums TDM Business Telephone Systems Comdial Telephones & Systems Incoming Line Forwarding (Hunt Group)

I have a Comdial DSUII and a Debut Voicemail that has been working reasonably well for a dozen years. Today we switched our three incoming lines from Verizon phone service to Comcast business class phone service. All three Comcast lines work individually, but the incoming line forwarding does not work like it used to.

By incoming line forwarding, I mean that all customers dial the same published phone number. If that incoming line is busy, that incoming call rings on the second line, and if that second line is busy, the incoming call rings on the third line. Verizon central station handled this functionality so the Comdial system just had to answer the three incoming lines and connect them to the appropriate station. (Is this also called a Hunt Group for incoming lines?)

The three Comcast lines have been each programmed at Comcast to Call Forward Busy to reproduce the Verizon functionality. The Comcast forwarding works if, and only if, the busy line is busy with a call that originated within our system. If the first line is busy with an incoming call that originated from outside our system, then a new incoming call will just hear ringing (not a busy signal) and the call is not forwarded to line 2.

After several calls to Comcast to double check that the configuration of the Call Forward Busy feature was correct at Comcast, a Comcast technician told me:
1. That the Comcast system is not recognizing that the line is busy because the Comdial system is not signaling that it ever picked up the first call.
2. That the Comdial system should be able to handle the transfer of incoming calls from one line to the next, so that the Comcast system should not have to.

I did not think the DSUII had this ability.

Is there any DSUII system parameters or system timing that will make it more likely that the Comcast system can recognize when a line is engaged?

Andy Lintz

Your Comcast tech is an idiot.

It's a shame that the end user has more working knowledge of telephony than a service provider. Escalate your issue to a Comcast service manager explaining it just as you have here.

Thanks for your input. I called back to Comcast again, and after lots of explaining and discussion, we found the problem to be that both Call Waiting and Call Forward Busy were enabled on each line. Once Call Waiting was disabled, then Call Forward Busy worked as it should for any and all calls. So it was a Comcast configuration issue as you predicted.

Thanks again,
Andy Lintz