Managing Call Waiting

Last modified: Saturday, March 24, 2007

In Australia, call waiting is an optional feature available from telephone service providers. The system produces an audible tone during a telephone conversation to signal that another party is trying to call.

Although it's a very useful feature, the generated tone often causes a modem to drop the line if it occurs during an internet connection.

There are two solutions to the problem...

1. Disable Call Waiting For All Calls

For Telstra customers, the call waiting feature can be disabled on the service by picking up the handeset, waiting for the dial tone, and dialling #43# (hash four three hash). This will disable call waiting for all future calls. To reactivate the feature, repeat the process but use the dial string of *43# (star four three hash).

For customers of other Telco's, it is usually necessary to contact the supplier directly to have the call waiting feature disabled for all calls.

2. Disable Call Waiting For Internet Calls Only

Rather than disabling call waiting for all calls, call waiting can also be disabled only for calls made by the modem. This is achieved by changing the dialup number stored in the local system.

For Telstra customers, simply add *44,, (star four four comma comma) in front of the GCom Internet Australia wide dialup number to disable call waiting only for the current call. That creates a dialup number of *44,,0198333781

For Optus customers, simply add #87,, (hash eight seven comma comma) in front of the GCom Internet Australia wide dialup number to disable call waiting only for the current call. That creates a dialup number of #87,,0198333781