Thread by @gravislizard

ok so let me tell you about one of the most cursed products i've found in my life. sit down.

so. music on hold. the concept of pressing hold on your phone and giving the caller something to listen to while you're not talking to them

i should preface this with: i'm not sure anyone wants it. i'm not sure anyone ever wanted it, and i won't go into my reasoning why but

what companies DO want though is the ability to play ads to people who are already customers because they want even more money, so it's important to remember that MOH is really "promotion on hold" and this is why a company would go out of their way to have it

PBXes almost all support MOH. even the most basic ones have a 3.5mm jack or w/e that you can plug a radio (illegal in many cases but who cares) or PC with a looping wav file or whatever into.

what do you do if you don't have a PBX? maybe you're some auto garage that has like three telephones, can't afford a PBX or PBX tech, but wants to play ads? well, music on hold is kinda hard to achieve in that case.

see, "hold" is not a meaningful thing. there's no signal you can send from a phone to say "we're on hold now"; it's just... muting the mic and speaker. So if your phone, the only thing that knows when the line is on hold, doesn't have MOH built in, it's kinda hard to achieve.

Sure, you can plug another device into the phone line that couples in an audio source, but how will it know when the call is on hold? And further, what do you do if one phone puts a call on hold but another retrieves it?

The answer, generally, is "get a PBX." But someone wanted to change that. Someone wanted to give power to the people with $30 phone systems. Enter the company with the most unfortunate name: Skutch Electronics

Here's the least-cursed of their products. This one is obnoxious, but sensible: You plug it into your lines and it listens for the DTMF tone that represents the star key. So you hit star, and music starts playing, then you put the call on hold.

This means callers will always hear a loud beep before the MOH, and another one when you pick back up and hit star to turn it off again, and you have to remember to do it both times. But hey, it's simple and works. $170

But if you want to spend a little bit more, you can get one that turns on and off automatically. Wow! Sounds great! How's it work? Well

The site does not have a good representative picture so here's the back from the manual. See, there's your four phone lines, and your audio input, and the indicators of which lines are on hold and getting music.

So what's the "flat cable"? Well, the thing needs to know which lines are on hold, right. So it has to determine that somehow.

Notice how it's sitting underneath something else

<xylophone plinks increasing in pitch as cartoon characters explore haunted mansion, growing ever closer to the monsters hiding place>

CONGRATULATIONS
IT HAS A CUSTOM PCB THAT YOU 3M DOUBLE-SIDE-TAPE TO THE FRONT OF THE PHONE AND IT SEES WHICH LINE LIGHTS ARE BLINKING

"but gravis, that would only work on one phone!"
yep! that's why they sell 20 variants

"but gravis, POTS phone models are a dime a dozen and there are unholy scads of them, there are like millions of models and they only last on the market for like 4 months before being replaced"

i know! i have no fucking clue how this is a viable business model!

"but gravis, it only monitors one phone. how would it account for calls being put on hold from other phones"

honestly? that's a story in itself and one I don't want to spoil. watch for a video from me very soon!