Getting to know something about the evolution of the telephone hold systems and the evolution of communication in general.

In the beginning...

Well, the history of telephone hold begins like this: as in every good story, it leads us back to the past, and also to some good and bad memories.

When the first equipments of telephony were implanted there was a big euphoria. There were these special rooms with huge equipments, wires all over the place, devices that had one different lamp for each letter from "a" to "g"... It was all very nice, but...

If a client called the company, while one of those enormous buttons were pressed, the client on the line had nothing to listen to or had to listen to that well-known tiring boring ice-cream-car digital music.

Then, voices from the after life began to rise. "What have they done to my 'Für Elise'!!!", said Beethoven angrly from his grave, and together with him were Mozart and all the other geniouses. On the other side of the line, the most common sound was the one of the phone being hung up. With all those forces of beyond against it, there was no other choice but to develop a new system that could play external music and then transfer this music to a PBX.

A lot of creative companies enjoyed the opportunity and turned on the radio on the phone. Others didn't put anything at all, 'cause after all, what's the point of making free advertisement for the rivals? Finally, a light at the end of the tunnel appeared to put some order into this caos, and someone decided to put a regular recorder with an endless tape (the famous auto-reverse tape-recorder) to play personalized messages.

Oh my! That was an experience almost as exciting as the invention of the telephone itself! It was a singular experience to personalize your own hold. It was (literally) to put music into your ears. "Let's leave the geniouses to their rest", said the most exultant ones.

And from that point on things only got more and more advanced, and with the new digital studios and easy access to cd recordings the old tape-recorders were put aside.

Well, just as in every situation of euphoria, there are also some times when you are not satisfied. You probably have already been through the experience of trying to start your car in the morning and it just won't! The recorders and discman had this peculiarity: one small engine working all day long and, with it, gears, belts... they all wrecked too easily. Just imagine: your company is waiting for that one million dollar call and, exactly in that important moment, your hold simply doesn't work! In order to solve that situation we have created the telephone hold recorded in chip.

Another euphoria! Share prices went up, new jobs were created and, finally, the mute hold was now forever dead.

After all those news, there was little room for more news. But even so, we still wouldn't give up, we are always making something new. Thus, before the new century arrived, in 1999, thinking about the communication of the coming 21^st century, we developed remote updating systems and a software to play news and economic indicators. Do you think it's a lot? We think that it's little, and the challenge continues, because after all, telephone hold has to be exactly like your company.

We still have a lot of road ahead of us, more than what we have already left behind. And the challenges for the future are much bigger! But how to face them?

Innovation, information and interaction. Those are the ideals that push us to go further...