Call waiting - Definition and Overview

Call waiting, in telephony, is a feature on some telephone networks. If a calling party places a call to a called party which is otherwise engaged, and the called party has the call waiting feature enabled, the called party is able to suspend the current telephone call and switch to the new incoming call, and can then negotiate with the new or the current caller an appropriate time to ring back if the message is important, or to quickly handle a separate incoming call.

Call waiting, then, alleviates the need to have a separate line for voice communications. Note that since the signal to the called party is audible, call waiting often can cause dial-up Internet connections to terminate. For this reason, call waiting is often disabled on shared voice/data telephone lines. In North America, the NANP uses *70 before a call to suspend call waiting for that call. A stuttered then regular dial tone confirms the de-activation.

Type II caller ID also works with call waiting.