[Asterisk-Users] How to detect answering machine

[Walt Reed]

On Fri, Aug 13, 2004 at 01:43:38PM -0400, Brian Jones said:
> 
> On 13-Aug-04, at 12:46 PM, Christian Victor wrote:
> 
> >Hi!
> >
> >Does anyone of you have an idea how to detect an answering machine on 
> >a dialout call?
> 
> I have thought of timing the amount of silence there is at the start of 
> a call, as an answering machine will usually start speaking as soon as 
> the call is picked up.  There would probably be a brief silence when a 
> human picks up a handset.  This would probably require a bit of work 
> though.

My * waits a second or two before giving a message for echotraining /
line stabilization. Not quite sure how easy it would be, but if you
looked at the speech pattern, a typical human is going to say a word or
two, then have silence. An answering machine generally has an exteneded
time period of speech before silence. This is not universally true - I
know some people who just have a simple "Hi, leave a message. (beep)"
message. That's short enough to break the algorithm.

Of course then you have the residential versus business way of answering
a call. "Dr Tweedle Dum's office, this is Sherry speaking. How can I help you
today?"

Answering machines are a big problem for all computer calling systems.
Sears, JC Penney, and the local doctors office all have proven to me
that they can't even handle a simple answering machine. I can't believe
that anyone could come up with a fool-proof system. Heck, the big
companies can't seem to do it at all.