Intercepted Number
In the middle 20th century in North America when a call could not be completed, for example because the phone number was not assigned, had been disconnected, or was experiencing technical difficulties, it went to an intercept operator who informed the caller. In the 1970s this service was converted to Automatic Intercept Systems which automatically chooses and presents an appropriate intercept message. Disconnected numbers are reassigned to new users after the rate of calls to them declines.
Outside of North America, operator intercept was rare, and in most cases calls to unassigned or disconnected numbers would result in a recorded message or number-unobtainable tone being returned to the caller.
Read more about this topic: Telephone Number
Famous quotes containing the word number:
“Strange goings on! Jones did it slowly, deliberately, in the bathroom, with a knife, at midnight. What he did was butter a piece of toast. We are too familiar with the language of action to notice at first an anomaly: the ‘it’ of ‘Jones did it slowly, deliberately,...’ seems to refer to some entity, presumably an action, that is then characterized in a number of ways.”
—Donald Davidson (b. 1917)