CONGESTION

CONGESTION is one of the results VICIdial records when a call doesn't go through. In plain terms it means the network couldn't complete the call — the phone system threw it back rather than letting it ring. It's not the same as a busy signal from the person you called; it's a problem earlier in the chain.

When you see CONGESTION show up as a call Status (lead status), the first place to look is your own side, not the lead. The most common causes are your Carrier rejecting the call, your [[trunk]] being full or misconfigured, or a routing rule sending the call somewhere it can't land. A close cousin is CHANUNAVAILABLE, which means the path itself wasn't even reachable — both point at infrastructure rather than the person you're dialing.

A few things that commonly cause it:

• You've hit the channel limit on your trunk — more simultaneous calls than the carrier allows.
• A bad dial prefix or a number format your carrier won't accept.
• The Carrier is blocking the destination, or the route to it is down on the SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) side.

If you suddenly get a wall of CONGESTION across many calls, treat it as a carrier or trunk issue and check there before you blame your list. It rarely means your data is bad — it usually means the road to the network is blocked. Note that CONGESTION is a system result, not a Disposition your agent picks.