Hotline

A hotline in the other widespread sense is a helpline. For other uses, see Hotline (disambiguation).

A typical non-dial red phone used for hotlines. This one is a prop which is on display in the Jimmy Carter Library and Museum, erroneously representing the Moscow–Washington hotline.[1]

A hotline is a point-to-point communications link in which a call is automatically directed to the preselected destination without any additional action by the user when the end instrument goes off-hook.[2] An example would be a phone that automatically connects to emergency services on picking up the receiver. Therefore, dedicated hotline phones do not need a rotary dial or keypad. A hotline can also be called an automatic signaling, ringdown, or off-hook service.

  1. ^ The red phone that was NOT on the Hotline. electrospaces.blogspot.nl. 30 August 2013
  2. ^ Derived from Federal Standard 1037C