Telephone call Totally Explained

Everything about Telephone Call totally explained

A 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 transmission when they're using fax machines. The call may use land line, cell phone, satellite phone or any combination thereof. Where a telephone call has more than one called party it's referred to as a conference call. When two or more users of the network are sharing the same physical line, it's called a party line or Rural phone line.
Calls are usually placed through a network (such as the Public Switched Telephone Network) provided by a commercial telephone company. If the caller's wireline phone is directly connected to the calling party, when the caller takes their telephone off-hook, the calling party's phone will ring. This is called a hot line or ringdown. Otherwise, the calling party is usually given a tone to indicate they should begin dialing the desired number. In some (now very rare) cases, the calling party can't dial calls directly, and is connected to an operator who places the call for them.
Most telephone calls in the world are set up using ISUP messages or one of its variants between telephone exchanges to establish the end to end connection.

Costs

Some types of calls are not charged, such as local calls dialled directly by a telephone subscriber in Canada, the United States, Hong Kong, or New Zealand (Residential subscribers only). In most other areas, all telephone calls are charged a fee for the connection. Fees depend on the provider of the service, the type of service being used (a call placed from a landline or wired telephone will have one rate, and a call placed from a mobile telephone will have a different rate) and the distance between the calling and the called parties. In most circumstances, the calling party pays this fee. However, in some circumstances such as a reverse charge or collect call, the called party pays the cost of the call. In some circumstances, the caller pays a flat rate charge for the telephone connection and doesn't pay any additional charge for all calls made. Telecommunication liberalization has been established in several countries to allows customers to keep their local phone provider and use an alternate provider for a certain call in order to save money.

Pranks

Today phone calls are riddled with a new type of modern nuisances, prank calls. Unless caller ID is available, one never knows if that'll be called by a loved one, or be the victim of a prank.

Tones

A typical phone call is placed by picking the phone handset up off the base and holding the handset so that the hearing end is next to the user's ear and the speaking end is within range of the mouth. Headsets are becoming more and more common, especially in car headsets, thus changing the way that people are conducting telephone calls in modern times. Preceding, during, and after a telephone call is placed, certain tones signify the progress and status of the telephone call:

a dial tone signifying that the system is ready to accept a telephone number and connect the call
either:
- a ringing tone signifying that the calling party has yet to answer the telephone
- a busy signal (or engaged tone) signifying that the calling party's telephone is being used in a telephone call to another person (or is "off the hook" though no number has been dialled, ie the customer doesn't want to be disturbed)
- a fast busy signal (or overflow busy tone) signifying that there's congestion in the telephone network, or possibly that the calling subscriber has delayed too long in dialling all the necessary digits. The fast busy signal is generally twice as fast as the normal busy signal.
status tones such as STD notification tones (to inform the caller that the telephone call is being trunk dialled at a greater cost to the calling party), minute minder beeps (to inform the caller of the relative duration of the telephone call on calls that are charged on a time basis), and others
a tone (sometimes the busy signal, often the dial tone) to signify that the called party has hung up.
tones used by earlier inband telephone switching systems were simulated by a Red box or a blue box used by "phone phreaks" to illegally make or receive free trunk/toll calls..

Patents

Rabinow, J., -- "Telephone call indicator" -- November 12, 1957Further Information

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