We have a Verizon land line and Verizon cell phones
Tonight when we try to call out on our land line, we keep getting "All circuits are busy now"

We have been here for over 20 years. Never heard this before

Anyone experiencing something similar ?

My work cell is Verizon and it's working fine...Dallas area.

quote:

"All circuits are busy now"

Last time I remember hearing that on my cell phone was on 9/11/01.

My service is through Verizon and I've been getting calls all day(Kansas City area).

Sounds like they may be cutting back on CO switching station capacity due to the reduced number of land lines still in use.

With Verizon cell service in Iowa, I'll sometimes get 'all circuits are busy' or 'number not in service' when trying to call a number I know works. If I try calling the same number again in a minute or two, it almost always works.

This only happens once a month or so.

A Verizon "land line" is really a Voice over IP (VoIP) network connection to a SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) server in their network. "All Circuits Busy" is an artifact of the classic Bell service that (probably) means that the network connection to the SIP server has timed out, or couldn't be completed for some other reason, e.g. an expired SSL certificate, although there are a whole raft of things that might be going on. There are very very few true "land line" circuits still in existence in the US. Not that the packets aren't being transmitted across terrestrial circuits, just that they are sharing the "line" with a whole lot of things that have little to do with voice communications.

Bottom line, excluding the concept of "land line" from one's vocabulary and thoughts will help in understanding the modern communications environment.

Back in 1960 I had just come off active duty in the Navy, and went to work at Bell Laboratories in one of the groups responsible for Central Office design.

There was some pretty sophisticated math behind the process of quantifying equipment used in processing telephone calls. Central Office equipment was engineered to a grade of service, based on historical "busy hour" traffic, where a "busy hour" was defined as the busiest hour of the ten busiest days, excluding peak calling days like Christmas, Mothers Day, etc.

A grade of service of .001 for example, meant that during one of those busy hours, less than one call attempt in a thousand should encounter a situation like "all circuits are busy."

quote:

Originally posted by walker77:

quote:

"All circuits are busy now"

Last time I remember hearing that on my cell phone was on 9/11/01.

My service is through Verizon and I've been getting calls all day(Kansas City area).

Exactly what I was gonna say.

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:
Back in 1960 I had just come off active duty in the Navy, and went to work at Bell Laboratories in one of the groups responsible for Central Office design.

There was some pretty sophisticated math behind the process of quantifying equipment used in processing telephone calls. Central Office equipment was engineered to a grade of service, based on historical "busy hour" traffic, where a "busy hour" was defined as the busiest hour of the ten busiest days, excluding peak calling days like Christmas, Mothers Day, etc.

A grade of service of .001 for example, meant that during one of those busy hours, less than one call attempt in a thousand should encounter a situation like "all circuits are busy."

It's wonderful what you can do if you have a monopoly and unlimited budget.

There's supposedly an actual law that requires landlines to be up 99.97% of the time. I learned that in some IT networking class.

One of the design requirements for the old Bell System Central offices: A forty year service life, with a total cumulative down-time not to exceed two hours during that forty years.

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Kind of reminds me of the story of the guy who wanted to sell some sort of hardware part to the manufacturer of Steinway pianos.

He dropped some samples off for testing and asked when he could come back to take an order.

He was told that they needed to do some longevity testing and he could return in seventy-five years.

i just called 1-800-922-0204, the verizon number i used for 20+ years....was told to call back during business hours.

My land line takes spells when it doesn't work at all. The remote handset just says "Check Phone Line" and there is no dial tone. This usually happens after a hard rain. Due to Murphy's Law, it usually happens when I'm expecting a call or desperately need to make one. My flip phone has crappy reception so I prefer to use the land line. When it's inoperative, it may be that way for several days.

flashguy

Depending on where you live, Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) may or may not be a Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP). My current POTS line is on copper cable pairs back to a SLIC (forgot the meaning) hub where it’s Trunked back to a Central Office (CO). My neighbor has POTS via his cable TV provider (ISP) (probably bundled) and has VOIP. In cases where copper paired cable is used, the CO is more likely some sort of electronic switch, but there are still a few mechanical switches in use today (old cross bar maybe even some old step witches). Where mechanical switches are there was a definite limit to the number of concurrent calls that could be switched limited by the hardware. The electronic switches took a lot of that away as it was more like software and a matter of provisioning the limits. Either system could be driven to it’s limits, but it was generally harder to do with electronic switches and more easily “fixed” by changing the settings (less hardware restricted).

Up shot to all that is, for whatever reason, it’s still possible to over load the switching network (mechanical or electronic). The “all lines are busy” message is still valid, even if not often heard. Even cellular networks can get congested and you’ll get a similar response.

I'll get that message once every few years. Very rare, but not unheard of...

I'm on Verizon and I've been trying to call Graeagle, CA for the past couple days and haven't been able to get through. The one time I did the connection kept breaking up, also unable to text to the Graeagle area.

I realize they are having some winter storms moving through, but still.....