Call Waiting on 202 w/3-4 accounts & VM mail alerts

[Maine_Yankee]

Callcentric

If I have 2 accounts on a 202's first line jack, how will call waiting work? I can see several cases:

• Say I am on SP1, and get a 2nd call on that number.
  
• I'm on SP1, but get a call on SP3...

And does the 202 support CNID+call waiting?

Second issue:
Does the 202+Callcentric offer alerting stutter dialtone to announce voicemail?
Or is email the only notice?

[restamp]

I cannot speak from experience for Callcentric.  This is how it works with voip.ms on the OBi202:

If I have 2 accounts on a 202's first line jack, how will call waiting work? I can see several cases:

• Say I am on SP1, and get a 2nd call on that number.
  Provided you have Call Waiting enabled, you should get a call waiting beep at which point you can (1) flash to put the first party on hold and pickup, (2) flash again to 3-way, (3) flash again to hang up on the second party and continue with the first.
  
  
• I'm on SP1, but get a call on SP3...
  Externally, it behaves the same as above.
  

The one time call-waiting won't work is if you receive an incoming call while in the process of *placing* another call or while another call is *ringing*.  In this case, the incoming call will go straight to voice mail.

And does the 202 support CNID+call waiting?
You should get CallerID on the call-waiting call if you wait long enough for it to be delivered (2nd ring, but you don't hear these rings yourself).

Second issue:
Does the 202+Callcentric offer alerting stutter dialtone to announce voicemail?
Or is email the only notice?
The OBi202+voip.ms does indeed deliver stuttered dialtone, and even has the option of a Visual MWI if your phone supports it and you turn it on.  This, of course, presumes you have left the voicemail in your mailbox on the server and not elected to automatically delete it when it is emailed to you.

[restamp]

You should get CallerID on the call-waiting call if you wait long enough for it to be delivered (2nd ring, but you don't hear these rings yourself).

In thinking about this some more, I've concluded that the answer I gave above is wrong:  The "CallerID is sent between the 1st and 2nd rings" rule obviously applies only to analog side of the call set-up signaling: The info is available to the OBi as soon as the call comes in, but the OBi must wait until its first ring is complete in order to adhere to the analog protocol for passing CallerID that the attached phone expects.  However, in the case of call waiting, there is no "ringing" of the analog phone, so there must be another spec for passing the CallerID info in that situation.  I tested it tonight, and sure enough, the call-waiting call's CallerID information is displayed on my phone within a second after the call-waiting beep occurs.  So, the OBi box transmits the information to the analog phone in short order in such circumstances, and I suppose what happens after that -- what the phone does with it -- is up to the designers of the phone itself.

[SteveInWA]

I can speak from experience with Callcentric.   

Yes, call waiting with caller ID (and caller ID NAME, too) works as you describe.  I have a 202 with 2 different Callcentric DIDs registered on SP2 and SP3, respectively, pointed to phone line jack #2 on the OBi.  Call waiting works just as it should, even if inbound call #1 was made to SP2, and inbound call #2 was made to SP3.

Callcentric supports (by default, if you configure it on your OBi via the OBiTALK portal's canned settings for Callcentric) both MWI (the stutter tone) and VMWI (the blinking light) feature for new voicemail messages.  The VMWI indicator will promptly turn off after you listen to the messages.

If your attached analog telephone supports those features, then they will simply work.

[Maine_Yankee]

Is VMBI the scheme where there's a burst of 202 modem tone to light the phone indicator?
Or the old hotel one with on-hook 130VDC and neon lamps in the phone?

[SteveInWA]

VMWI is the signal from the service provider that tells your phone to turn on or off its message waiting LED.  There's no neon lights involved...that's ancient technology.