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In the late 90s I was with a group of people and we were trying to make a call. The line was busy, had been for an hour. We assumed it was the teenage daughter on the phone. One in the group took the phone, dialed a lot of numbers, then asked for the number we were trying to call. He punched it in and handed the phone back. The call went through and the confused teenage daughter answered - confessed because her call was interrupted. Everyone in the room was amazed and he went back to reading as if nothing happened.

I don't know what went on, but I can only imagine it was related to FO. My thought was he punched in to somewhere that would let him use a non normal button by way of numeric entry and connected the call - but I don't have a clue.




As far as I know, anyone could do busy line interruption in the U.S. with the help of the telephone operator:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Busy_line_interrupt




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