tony_2003

RING RING...................RING RING...................RING RING................

I have heard a UK ring eminating from closed office doors a number of times and I know it's not coming from a mobile phone. So how do you get this ring on a land line? Anyone done it? Would be an intresting novelty.

meauxna

We have that as our "distinctive ring" (there are 4 standard choices). DR allows us to have one dial tone with 2 phone numbers attached to it. The 2nd number is for our fax line. The fax machine is programmed to recognize that particular DR.
Funny, I never thought about it being a UK ring tone until you said it here. I guess I will now forever hear it that way!

PBC_1966

Being pedantic, if you listen to the timing carefully you'll probably find it's not quite a British ring. Standard U.K. ring is 0.4 sec. on, 0.2 off, 0.4 on, then a 2-second interval before it repeats. The double-ring in the U.S. generally has a longer interval.

You can also find variant rings on a PBX (Private Branch eXchange) system. If the office in question is on a PBX, then it could have been programmed to give a normal ring on internal calls and a double-ring on calls originating from outside the building, or vice versa.

Double-rings have actually been around in the U.S. a long time, as they were common on the old party lines in the past. Some rural areas could have as many as ten parties on a line, with distinctive ringing codes for each house (i.e. single long ring, two short rings, three short, long-short, short-long, etc.)

By the way, in the very early days of automatic switching British phones also used a single ring. The double ring was adopted as standard after studies showed that people found it sounded more urgent and tended to answer more quickly.

ScousePete

I bet you are the life and soul of every party

tony_2003

PBC_1966

Put it down to being an occupational hazard! I used to work for the phone company and freely admit to being a grade-A, card-carrying nutty geek type when it comes to telephone equipment.

mattbutt

Is it worse the fact that i found that interesting?

:scared:

Pulaski

The ring is generated in the exchange of that the phone you are calling is connected to, which doesn't explain why an American phone has a British ring pattern, but whatever the reason it is being generated locally in the US. My guess would be that the internal company switchboard is generating it.