[Asterisk-Users] Announcement to caller when called party haspicked up - without initial Answer()?

[Alex Barnes]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: David Liu [mailto:david at deltapath.com] 
> Sent: 31 January 2005 14:34
> To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion
> Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] Announcement to caller when 
> called party haspicked up - without initial Answer()?
> 
> 
> This is super easy to do.  All you need to do is to put that 
> announcement in 
> a MP3 and set a musiconhold class for that incoming Zap channel. Then 
> basically when ever that PSTN number rings, Asterisk will 
> play the MP3 
> stream "Your call may be monitored or recorded, please hangup 
> if you do not 
> agree...etc" in a loop until the line is answered.  Caller 
> doesn't pay a 
> single dime to listen to your announcement(s).  So now you 
> have announcement 
> on ringing!
> 
> David Liu
> Hong Kong
> 
> 

To play music on hold first the call would need to be answered!?!?!?

Its straight forward to play an announcement to a caller just prior to
dialing an extension.
However what you need to do is establish whether a channel is infact
busy before issuing the Answer() command.  I suspect that this is either
not possible or would require some huge dirty hack.  But someone more
knowledgable than myself could tell you am sure.

That aside, TBH I think as a customer I would prefer to pay the couple
of pence to wait on hold (knowingly) / be asked to leave a message / be
told I am X in queue / etc than to only hear ringing.
After about 20seconds of ringing I would give up.  Being put on hold I
would be more forgiving.

And whats more important to you, customers that give up and look
elsewhere or customers that have to pay for 30-60seconds of holding IF
they choose to.

Also I was under the impression that in Europe calls are charged as soon
as you start ringing and not on pickup (this may be out of date as its
been a while since my school skiing trip ;-P )

HTH

alex 



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