Weird international phone call phenomenon--techie, pls. explain?

My bf calls me regularly from Australia and this weird thing keeps happening. This doesn't happen when anyone else calls me (but no one else calls me from Australia. I'm in the States). Both of us use land lines. He calls me from different phones, but I'm always on the same phone. He uses a phonecard every time--always the same brand.

What happens is, my phone rings & I answer & no one is there, so I go hello hello & no one speaks, so I hang up. Then I wait because I know it has to be him, and a minute or a minute and a half later the phone rings again and there he actually is (he speaks, and I hear him).

I had thought that when this happened it meant he was calling me twice & for some reason wasn't getting through the first time, but he isn't. He's only calling once. This is so weird, and it only started a few weeks ago although he's been calling me for years.

Are there any telephone supertechies out there who can clue me in...what the H$%! is going on? Thanks!

(EDIT): Thanks, Jeff! But two things (if you're still around). Firstly, he's really only calling one time, not two. But the phone rings, I answer, there is no voice, then I hang up, then I wait half a minute (not a minute and a half as I said--sorry--that's the second thing) and then it finally rings again and there he is--so the phone rang on two apparently separate occasions, but according to my bf, only ONE call was actually made! Does that change anything? Thanks again! I didn't know if I would get an answer on this one because it was so technical, so I really appreciate it.

Sometimes prepaid phonecard is hard to connect. But when i used a different phone card i dial once and clear connection. i buy this site if you want to take a look and try.
http://www.comfi.com/
card expire in 10 months. no pin number. 1800 and code you can look the code there to where you want to call.

What would happen if you didn't hang up the first time...... and just waited until he eventually starts talking...?

It may be a combination of routing and "call-setup" timing issues.
Ringing, (especially over Internet routes) that the called person hears, is not always synchronized with the actual ringing the caller hears. I know this again from my experience with VoIP calls.
So, I can only guess that the ring came through to your phone (unsynchronized with the call-setup) while the voice route portion of the call was still being setup.
Also, it takes time for "hang-ups" (from your end) to be "reported" back to the callers system. So, it is possible the call continued to try to ring you, even after you hung-up after the first pick-up. So, by picking-up again, due to delays in the system, it connected you the 2nd time around you picked-up the call....

That's the best guess.... It seems to be all about a combination of "timing" of call setup and routing, and delays happening in the process.....


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Many phone cards (most, if not all) get their cheap rates by using VoIP routes over the global Internet.
Routes may be somewhat randomly taken for quickest access, or cheapest toll route. But, some routes may be having problems and may not be fully compatible with their service or just having technical problems along any given route. So by disconnecting and calling again, a different rout is probably given, which ends up being a "good" route and the call completes with no problem. This is the nature of the Internet and routing, in general.

I do a lot of testing of many different VoIP calling services and I have experienced these kinds of problems on many occasions. And, it is usually remedied by just calling again and getting a better route. Or, sometimes there are technical/configuration problems with connecting to a given service, and the phones will ring but no voice, or just one-way-voice.

All long distance phone calling services can have these kinds of "routing" problems. There are usually many routes and many "intermediate" carriers along the way that can contribute to technical difficulties....

Australia is a long way to call the USA from.... so there are probably lots of possibilities for glitches along the way...