we're sorry, your call cannot be completed at this time

[bills1951]

A few months ago, for several days, I got this message on my land-line phone when I tried to call my dermatologist. I could call anyone else successfully, but not that doctor's office. Eventually, the problem went away. Today, I've been getting the same message when I call my father. In both cases, the problem was intermittent.  After a few hours of unsuccessful calls, the call went through. So, I was finally able to speak with my Dad.

What is going on, and how can we fix it?

By the way, I saw a really old post on this topic, and the (useless) response was to use 10-digit dialing. In both cases where this occurred, I of course was using 10 digits.

[gs0b · Accepted solution]

The phone network sometimes gets overloaded, which results in messages like this or fast busy.  It could be a problem anywhere along the path from your phone to the callee's phone. For example, your dermatologists phone provider might have had issues or their phone system might have been down.

All an end user can do is try the call again.