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What country was this in? I distinctly remember dialing my own number resulting in nothing but a busy signal.

I’ve also (a decade ago) called my own number (a cell line) and it gave me my voice mail as if I had just “speed dialed” “1”

In the UK bitd (~1980) the test number was 174. It just rang you back when you hung up. There was no message. The exchanges weren't that sophisticated.

On mine, it was 981 followed by the last 4 digits of my phone number that would result in a "callback," and a constant tone would play when you answered.