what are telephone hunt groups in analog systems?

Question

I am trying to explain to a CEO how an analog telephone system, which uses external hunt provided by the local telephone company works.

Answer 1

The second part tells me you know what a hunt group is. I'm not sure what you need to know about "how it works" for a CEO.

A hunt group is a group of phones that can all accept calls from a common number. The phone company obviously knows which phones are off hook and which are on hook, and can pick and ring one of the on hook phones when a call comes in.

Did you need more than that?

Answer 2

A telephone hunt group is a group of telephones connected to a telephone system such as a PBX (Private Branch eXchange). The phones are programmed so if the first phone is busy the second phone will take the call. If the second phone is busy the third will take the call and so on. That is called a terminal hunt, where calls start at phone 1 and hunt to 2, then 3 then 4 etc. There are other types of hunting such as sending the call to the phone that has been idle the longest (that calls are distributed evenly).
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunt_Group
External telephone trunk lines also use hunting in a similar fashion. The first call going to the main published number and if its busy then the call goes to the second line etc. This hunting is set up in the telephone central office and is not programmable from the users PBX.
See: http://www.telos-systems.com/techtalk/PSTN/Trbleshtng%20the%20PSTNrev2c.pdf#search='telephone%20trunk%20hunting'

Answer 3

A hunt group comprises a main number and one or more auxiliary numbers. The aux numbers are 'invisible' to the the outside callers. Anyone calling the main number will be switched to either the main or aux lines which is free.

When someone dials the main number, the call will be routed to any of the lines in the hunt group. Thus if you have 1 main number with 4 aux lines, then in theory you can accept 5 incoming calls at any one time. This is used in a business/office environment where you just need to publish one number and all calls will then end up at the operator's console where he/she will switch this to the correct person in the office.