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, 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 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.