Telephone Technology

ILECs are local U.S. telephone companies that were involved in the 1980's breakup of AT&T. Learn more about ILECs in this article.

By Dave Roos

Toll-free numbers are free for callers, making them ideal for businesses. Learn how toll-free numbers work in this article.

By David Baez

You may have experienced automatic dialing from telemarkers. However, automatic dailers are a large part of the telecommunications industry. See some of the lesser known and beneficial uses of automatic dialers.

By Dave Roos

IVR, or interactive voice response, is a new technology that many of us use everyday. Learn more about IVR in this article.

By Dave Roos

Telephone country codes make it easy to call another country. Learn more about telephone country codes in this article.

By Dave Roos

Is a random number you don't know blowing up your phone? Try reverse phone lookup and maybe you can solve the mystery of who it belongs to.

By Diane Dannenfeldt & Talon Homer

Voicemail is a growing necessity in both homes and businesses. Learn more about how voicemail works in this article.

By Tim Crosby

Making international calls can be confusing if you don't have the right information. Learn about making international calls in this article.

By Dave Roos

Currently, there are several VoIP services on the market -- the two most well-known ones are Skype and Vonage. Although they both use VoIP technology, they're quite actually quite different from each another.

By Tracy V. Wilson

The phone number you use to call another person is basically an address, similar to the street address of your home. Have you ever wondered what all those numbers mean?

By HowStuffWorks.com Contributors

It's one of those seemingly-unexplainable lapses in logic -- Why do these two digit-based devices order their number keys in exactly opposite ways?

How does caller ID work on a telephone? It turns out that the process of making the caller ID display possible is remarkably simple at your end of the line.

Over the last 20 years or so, fiber optic lines have taken over and transformed the long distance telephone industry. Optical fibers are also a huge part of making the Internet available around the world.

If you have underground phone wiring in your neighborhood, rather than pole wiring, you will frequently see these little boxes all over your neighborhood -- one for every two or three houses or so.

One of the relative miracles of modern times is the reliability of the phone system. The power goes out fairly often for most people, but your telephone is always working (as long as you pay the bill). Why is that?

When you make a long-distance call, there is an amazing amount of technology working to make your call happen. To understand the computerized systems used today, it's helpful to go back in time and look at how long-distance calls were first routed.