I need some help from any DU telecom experts (I know we have some here).

[Redstone]

We've been tryiing to call Mrs R's sister in Austria for a week and a half now. Every time, we've gotten the three-tone whistle, and a message that "your call can not be completed at this time in that country you are calling."

Of course, when I called AT&T, the dumbass operator just parroted "that means all circuits are busy."

Excuse me, but this is AUSTRIA, not Somalia. I simply CANNOT believe that their phone system has been broken / overloaded for over a week.

Anyone know anything I don't know about something going on in the phone systems in Europe in general, or Austria in particular? Any advice?

Thanks in advance,

Redstone

[Redstone]

1. Anyone? I've Googled until I turned blue in the face, and can't find a reason.

Redstone

[Ptah]

2. If you are getting blue in the face from Googling,

you are doing it wrong.

[CreekDog]

14. you should breathe while googling

[crispini]

3. You've gotta be dialing it wrong.

Forgive me if you're an experienced international dialer -- but every time I have traveled abroad and wanted to call home, or wanted to call abroad when I was home -- and I've dialed a number and gotten that "do doo DOOT" noise, what it REALLY meant was I'd left out a 0 or a 1 or some such nonsense. I'd doublecheck the dialing string first. Especially if you're dialing to or from a cell. :hi:

[Redstone]

4. Thanks, but that's not the case. Have double and triple-checked the number, and

it's the right one, and getting dialed correctly. What the bozo operators at AT&T is telling me is that "all the circuits are busy" for the whole country of Austria.

And, of course, the "international dialing department" of "the New AT&T" is only open from 8 AM to 5 PM.

So I guess it waits until tomorrow.

Redstone

[jberryhill]

5. possibly a dumb question....

But is AT&T your default international carrier, or are your direct-dial calls going through Joe's Long Distance Service?

Try this.... get an international phone card - one of those things where you dial an 800 number first, enter the card number, and then enter the number you want to dial. Ask the guy at the 7-11 which one is best for Australia. Believe it or not, the guy at the 7-11 WILL know this.

I kid you not, but I run my own business and make a LOT of international calls. I make them all on some el cheapo phone card that I bought two and a half years ago, recharge from my credit card, and have the dialing sequence for the 800 number and card number programmed into all of my phones and my fax machine.

Finally, since you are calling Australia, be sure to hold your phone so that the keypad is upside-down when you are dialing. Otherwise it won't work.

[Redstone]

6. No, it's worked a charm until the last two weeks. And it's Austria, not Australia, so

we don't have to turn the phone upside down.

I still don't understand why AT&T thinks all the phone line in Austria are busy.

Redstone

[jberryhill]

13. That reminds me of an old Austrian joke...

in view of which I must ask....

Are you trying to call Großwarasdorf or Kleinwarasdorf?

[Flaxbee]

7. a few questions / suggestions....

As a previous poster (who I think mistakenly believed you were calling Australia) asked, who is your international carrier? If it's AT&T, they've got plenty of lines into Austria, but if it's not AT&T, the company just might not have a lot of international capacity.

Have you asked the operator to make the call for you? Might solve the problem right there. Make them do it, or explain why they can't.

http://www.idt.net/personal/intl/ - check out this website. Used to be you could 'test' their service for free but now you have to sign up; however, their capacity is very large and they offer good rates for both your 'home' phone as well as your cell.

Finally, you can always try Skype.

[Redstone]

8. Yes, we have AT&T from end to end. That's why it's so frustrating. And when the operators

tried the calls, they got the same messages, and said, "well, all circuits in that country are busy."

Which I do not believe. That's why I'm so honked off about the situation.

Redstone

[Flaxbee]

10. honked off. lol!

:rofl: - sorry, some phrases just slay me.

Anyway. The AT&T operator has access to the trunk line which is as good as it can get. If you could get thru until about a week and a half ago, then perhaps the lines in Austria are f*cked up, capacity diminished, whatever. The problem being with Austria's telecom, not ours. Perhaps they hate us for our freedoms and don't want to talk to outsiders.

Not trying to be flippant. Just seems to defy explanation. Any way you could have someone in another country call into Austria? See if they get through?


edit: ThomCat's got a much clearer reply than I had, so I'll stand by. Removed my less-than-clear explanations.

[ThomCat]

11. AT&T doesn't have any lines at all into Austria.

They have contracts with European carriers to transport calls originating from AT&T. They will market this as "AT&T has more access in more countries" but it's because they bought the rights to send large volumes to the local carriers there.

Using the AT&T operators is a good idea. If they can't get through then they lose money, so their trouble tickets get attention where yours won't. That makes them much more likely to have working international service with the most effective routing, instead of the least expensive routing.

[ThomCat]

9. There are several posibilities.

First, AT&T, in their infinite wisdom, does not guarantee to connect international calls. Their service guarnatees device a 50% connection rate as a success. So it could be that they have technical problems with their international hand-off, and because it's within their threshold for that country, they won't report a problem.

Of course, that doesn't help you if all calls to one particular region of that country fail 100% of the time. All they care about is that over-all calls to that country succeed more than 50% of the time.

And this wonderful scenario is the best that we could get out of them as a Corporate customer. I imagine that it's even worse if you're a very small business or a (gasp!) residential customer. You can effectively go screw yourself.

Second, it could be a problem within AT&Ts network. It could be that one of their internal trunk groups that connects to their own international switches is down. In that case, they'll eventually notice, eventually fix it, and your service will eventually be restored. But don't expect them to admit to it.

Third, not all of their their long distance switches use the same protocol and receive exactly the same input. To use domestic long distance as an example, some will expect the local switch to send them the 10 digits you dialed, [phone]. Others will expect to be sent 11 digits, 1+(123)-456-7890. That 1+ is either forwarded or stripped off. The local switch that dial through only relays the number you are calling in one way or the other. If AT&T makes a programming error in how your calls are routed, so that you can might get routed to a switch that expects the wrong number of digits, then a certain percentage of your long distance calls will just fail to connect.

This problem can also occur with international calls. So because they have different switches, running different operating systems, looking for different data, and they made a mistake networking them, your calls stop dead because "you" aren't sending the right digits even though you really are. Lots of luck getting this resolved. One of the offices I manage had this problem and the only solution we found was to change the long distance carrier.

[Redstone]

12. Thanks for the info. The mystery is that we've been calling there for 15 years with no problems,

and now all of a sudden it's like Austria has one "circuit" and it's always busy, like trying to call NYC on Mother's Day.

Redstone

[Redstone]

15. Mystery solved!

It turns out that it was a "bad message" on the part of AT&T. I did FINALLY get through to someone who could actually help this morning, and it turns out that the number is no longer in service (Mrs R's sister disconnected her landline to go "all-cellular").

The whole problem was that I was getting an "all circuits busy" message instead of a "number no longer in service" message.

Sheesh.

Redstone