In the context of phone calls, "go through" means connect. . I tried to phone you three times this morning, but I could not get through. . THis may have evolved when phone networks had very finite capacity and you could not actually connect to a phone to make it ring, because too many people were already using the circuits, lines. In more modern times, it would probably be used to mean that the phoen rang but was not answered. . A "collect" call is when the person being called has to pay for the call. In this case the person has to accept the call and the phone company or system has to allow you to try to place the call, has to let you try to make the call. In past times this was a manual process involving the caller talking to the operator in the phone company. Some companies would not let you try to make a collect cal from a public phone box. So, he was not able to get the call to go through the phone system to the destination. In the end, the person being called, might refuse to pay for a call. They would opften not know who was trying to call them. Could be that he could not get though as the phone system, manual or automatic, would not allow it to proceed.