13th June 2002

Is your dial-up connection conflicting with local phone services? Lockergnomie Stan Phillips may have a fix: "Here in Canada, whenever you phone someone and the line is busy, within seconds you get a message from Bell letting you know that they will call you back when that connection is clear. Of course, this can be done for a fee that is not mentioned to the end of the message. Pick up the receiver. Dial *02 (Asterisk Zero Two). You will hear two beeps." I suggest placing this alphanumeric string before the ISP's phone number (in the designated field). *70 will disable call waiting (at least, in the United States). Here's the kicker: you should be able use either of these two prefixes on regular phone calls, too. Now, is the same number always busy when you try to connect to it? Ask your ISP for alternative connection points. To add these other numbers to your dial-up account settings in Windows XP, right-click on a modem-based network connection, select the Alternates button on the General tab, click the Add button, then enter the new number. Repeat as necessary.