[asterisk-users] UK call initiating party hangup control on analog home lines

[roberts at latnet.lv]

I suppose this is rather an informative e-mail than a question. However if
people had similar experiences or could comment what the differences are in
other countries or with business analog lines, it would be interesting. It took
me a week until a BT engineer was sent to my home home, since BT tech support
was unable to provide information about the problem.

Problem: Calling party controls how long the line will stay open once it is
connected.

Example: When asterisk box receives a call, it answers, perhaps takes a voice
message and issues hangup(). If the calling party does not hang up - the line
remains connected - i.e. the caller effectively controls the line. Of course
the caller pays for it to BT, therefore it is not a problem for BT.

On asterisk irc channel I received a reply along the lines "the caller controls
the line, it has always been like that in telephony" and also a reply that in
Germany it is different. My experience in Latvia is also different - if any
party hangs up, the other party hears busy signal and line is disconnected.
Kind of makes more sense if you are used to it.

I am posting to provide information for people who might be using landlines in
UK and become similarly confused. There is very little information about this,
I couldn't find it on the web, people on asterisk irc also were at a loss, BT
phone support themselves thought this was a fault. It took an engineer to be
able to explain that this was a UK PSTN feature by design.

This is not asterisk problem - for example asterisk in my case detects remote
hangups alright (which usually has been the problem with UK lines and about
which there is quite a bit of info on www), and it can hangup properly if it
has initiated a call.

So a person calling from say Vodafone mobile would have to be careful to
actually make sure he/she presses the red button after speaking to my answering
machine on Asterisk. Or any answering machine for that matter, since the problem
of course is reproducible with any phone.

Best wishes,

Roberts