Three way calling (conference calling): Subscriber A (who has 3 way calling) calls Subscriber B and an answering machine or modem answers the call; Subscriber

Three way calling (conference calling): Subscriber A (who has 3 way calling) calls Subscriber B and an answering machine or modem answers the call; Subscriber A hangs up and quickly picks up the phone to make another call or the receiver bounces when they hung up (hookflash). The phone system thinks Sub A tried to conference in another caller so it put subscriber B on hold (instead of disconnect), but since the three way call failed, it attempts to reconnect Sub A to the call on hold with Sub B. To do this, it rings back Subscriber A. Subscriber A's answers their ringing phone, but hear nothing. Subscriber B's answering machine records the system calling Subscriber A back (ringback tones) and the confused "hello?, HELLO?!?" from Subscriber A who hears nothing as the answering machine is silent. This also sometimes happened when a friend of mine tried to setup a modem game with me for DOOM at 2am. If the connection failed for some reason and did a hookflash (and my modem was still trying to connect), it attempted to reconnect him by ringing his line back and waking up his entire family. When his mom answered the call to my screeching modem that was still trying to connect: BUSTED. So lesson learned: disable 3 way calling. You probably don't use it and it often results in this absurd but sometimes hilarious behaviour. Playing DOOM at 2am will result in terrible grades in high school.