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When you call to report a problem with your phone service, the rep at your carrier asks you to describe it. The more specifically you can describe the issue, the easier it is to find and repair. The rep might directly ask you for the call treatment, or the symptoms of the failed, or substandard call. This is where telecom can seem like a foreign language. You know what is happening, but putting it into words that can be understood might not be that simple. The following are a few major call treatments that you will encounter.
Understanding why "your call cannot be completed as dialed"
If you hear a recording that tells you that your call can't be completed as dialed, you may have misdialed the number, the area code of the number you are dialing having changed, or a translation problem may have occurred in a carrier network somewhere along the line. This recording generally indicates that the problem affects an individual phone number. Your ability to dial other numbers in the state, town, or country is usually not impacted. Try the number again, check the digits and the area code, and then make the call to your carrier's customer service.
Understanding why "the number you have called has been disconnected or is no longer in service"
A recording that says that the number has been disconnected or is no longer in service might be legitimate; the number has simply been disconnected. If you know it's not disconnected, either you misdialed the number, or there is a translation issue somewhere.
Handling an "all circuits are busy" message
On rare occasions you may hear a recording that tells you that all circuits are busy. This recording rarely means that all the circuits available in your carrier's network are occupied, unless you are trying to call your Mom at 9 a.m. on Mother's Day, along with everyone else in the world. This recording is generally played when your carrier has an outage of some sort and a portion of their network is down. If a backhoe accidentally cuts through a phone line, thereby taking down phone service for the entire city, you will probably hear this recording when you try to dial out (the carrier unfortunately doesn't have a sorry, but our main phone line has been cut by a backhoe recording).
Listening for tones and tags
Tones and tags are supplemental sounds or recordings and are generally attached to a standard recording. Listen for tri-tones that are played before recordings by a local carrier. They are generally three ascending notes that sound like they come from a cheap synthesizer — very shrill and high pitched.
The tags are more important because they frequently list the switch that is playing the message. If you hear a recording of your call cannot be completed as dialed — fifteen dash two, you know that switch 15 on your carrier's network probably has a problem. If you hear tones and tags during a recording, be sure to note them, because alerting a technician to the specific tags can shorten the amount of time it takes to solve your problem. Instead of tracking down the failed call, the technicians can go directly to switch 15 and analyze it. The number after the dash may correspond to the recording played (for example, the two in this example may mean cannot be completed as dialed). On the other hand, the number may have no significance at all. Every carrier has its own system for the tags played. The tags may mean nothing to some carriers, but to others they can be significant. Always have more information than less.
Understanding the fast busy signal
A fast busy signal is a busy signal that sounds twice as fast as the normal busy signal. You will probably hear a fast busy signal when part of your carrier's network is down (the pesky backhoe again), so your call can't be completed.
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