Facilities Available

A typical examination question you may see.... “discuss the facilities on modern telephone systems and ISDN”

Discussion Point: “what constitutes a modern telephone system?

There is no clear answer to this, but the answers should focus on the last ten years.

Consider these general services now available:

	Answer phones - useful for call screening and when you cannot answer the call right now.
	Call waiting - lets you know that another call is coming in.
	"1471" which lets you know the number of the person who phoned
	Tone controls for remotely controlling an answer machine.
	Tones used to control services such as booking cinema tickets
	Ex-Directory for private numbers.
	Call barring to prevent premium rate numbers being dialled.
	Caller ID, lets you know the number of the caller. Some services links the calling number to a name such as "Mum" should you wish.
	Different ring tones for each person in the home.
	Conference calls to allow a number of people to join the same call
	Ring back - if the number you are calling is engaged, then your telephone rings when the person has finished their call.
	Voice Mail - instead of an answer-phone, you can use the voice recording services of your telephone provider.
	Video phones - you can see who you are talking to (although has not proved to be that popular!)
	Video conferencing

All these have been made possible by two major changes:-

	Computerised calls are 'tagged' which identifies such things as where the call originated - hence services such as 'Caller ID' and "1471" are possible.
	Tones are now used instead of the old 'pulse' system. This makes that call center menu that tells you to "Press 1 now" so common.

Another point is that the modern handset itself may offer quite a few convenient services:-

	"Last number redial"
	Memory for storing often used numbers
	Call times to keep an eye on likely bills.

There are also improvements to the way telephones are used in the home:-

	Cordless (radio) phones for roaming around the house.
	Number of extensions has increased within the house.
	Phone systems to deal with disabilities such as Braille for blind people or speech-to-text to assist the hard of hearing.

NOTE: Standard modern telephones are still using the ANALOGUE system that connects your house to the telephone exchange.

There is now a growing number of people using a DIGITAL system such as ISDN