A
busy signal (or
busy tone or
engaged tone) in telephony is an audible or visual signal to the
calling partyThe calling party is a person who initiates a telephone call over the public switched telephone network, usually by dialing a telephone number....
that indicates failure to complete the requested
connectionA telecommunication circuit is any line, conductor, or other conduit by which information is transmitted.A dedicated circuit, private circuit, or leased line is a line that is dedicated to only one use...
of that particular
telephone callA telephone call is a connection over a telephone network between the calling party and the called party.-Information transmission:A telephone call may carry ordinary voice transmission using a telephone, data transmission when the calling party and called party are using modems, or facsimile...
.
There are several types of signals known as busy signals:
- a reorder tone
The reorder tone, also known as the fast busy tone or the congestion tone, is a dual-frequency tone of 480 Hz and 620 Hz at a cadence of 0.25 seconds on, 0.25 off. It is used to indicate that a person has dialed an invalid code, or that all circuits are busy and/or their call is unroutable...
, (sometimes called a fast busy signal), indicates that no transmissionIn telecommunications, transmission is the process of sending, propagating and receiving an analogue or digital information signal over a physical point-to-point or point-to-multipoint transmission medium, either wired or wireless...
path to the called number is available.
- an otherwise unspecified busy signal indicates that the called number is occupied or otherwise unavailable
- this tone sometimes occurs at the end of a call to indicate the other party has hung up.
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A
busy signal (or
busy tone or
engaged tone) in telephony is an audible or visual signal to the
calling partyThe calling party is a person who initiates a telephone call over the public switched telephone network, usually by dialing a telephone number....
that indicates failure to complete the requested
connectionA telecommunication circuit is any line, conductor, or other conduit by which information is transmitted.A dedicated circuit, private circuit, or leased line is a line that is dedicated to only one use...
of that particular
telephone callA telephone call is a connection over a telephone network between the calling party and the called party.-Information transmission:A telephone call may carry ordinary voice transmission using a telephone, data transmission when the calling party and called party are using modems, or facsimile...
.
There are several types of signals known as busy signals:
- a reorder tone
The reorder tone, also known as the fast busy tone or the congestion tone, is a dual-frequency tone of 480 Hz and 620 Hz at a cadence of 0.25 seconds on, 0.25 off. It is used to indicate that a person has dialed an invalid code, or that all circuits are busy and/or their call is unroutable...
, (sometimes called a fast busy signal), indicates that no transmissionIn telecommunications, transmission is the process of sending, propagating and receiving an analogue or digital information signal over a physical point-to-point or point-to-multipoint transmission medium, either wired or wireless...
path to the called number is available.
- an otherwise unspecified busy signal indicates that the called number is occupied or otherwise unavailable
- this tone sometimes occurs at the end of a call to indicate the other party has hung up. See disconnect supervision
Disconnect supervision is a term in telephony describing signaling between the telephone exchange and a connected party used to indicate that the connected call is being disconnected....
.
Many different countries have different signalling tones that act as "busy signals".
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