2 phone numers on one landline? (Slightly OT) [Telecom]

Is it possible for Ma Bell to provide me service for 2 numbers on one phone line? The reason is that we are consolidating at one location and would like to keep both phones.

The phone rep said the only way would be installing another line at the new location - something the landlord does not permit.

The other option I have is to port the number to my cellphone but I the phone rep could not guarantee me that there would be no downtime in the dsl service if I were to do this since the cell provider is tmobile.

Does anyone have any insight on how to convince ATT to configure their switch to route 2 numbers to the same line

Thanks, /chi

***** Moderator's Note *****

Here are some of your options:

  1. Make the second line a "virtual" number, which forwards to your real line. Here in Verizon territory, this is called Remote Call Forwarding.

  1. Port the second line to a VoIP provider, and use your DSL connection for it.

  2. Switch to ISDN service, which can provide two separate call paths on a single pair. It tends to be pricey, but you'll have full use of both lines at your new location. I don't know if this will work with ADSL.

  1. Leave the second line where it is, and forward it to your other number. You'll need to make a deal with the old landlord and/or new tenant at the old location.

  2. Tell the new landlord you want an exception to the rule.

  1. Do some midnight rewiring at your new site.

Bill Horne Temporary Moderator

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Reply to
chithi123
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wrote

The two obvious solutions are: Remote (Fixed) call forwarding of the second number to the first, like Bill mentioned OR If the building is new enough to have quad (four conductor) inside wire in place already, no additional inside wiring would be required for the second line and I'm not sure the landlord can legally prevent additional drops to the premises (what would be the point?).

Reply to
Who Me?

Are both numbers served out of the same central office? If they are, Identa Ring/Smart Ring/Teen Line can land both numbers on the same line.

Unless your building is historic or construction is improbable, I fail to see why the landlord would not permit you to add another line. Subscriber carrier techniques went out the window with the DSL as it uses the same or similar frequencies as the DSL.

If you have a chance, you could sign up for VoIP service and port the number to VoIP. It may take 30 days to get it done. In the meantime, order Call Forwarding on the remote number and forward it. Then order the porting to VoIP.

Just a couple of thoughts.

Carl

Reply to
Carl Navarro

Sure. The name for that feature is distinctive ring. Technically, they can do it in two seconds so long as the two numbers are both on the same switch, although since it's AT&T, there's lots of bureaucratic reasons they might not want to do it.

Failing that, I concur with the advice to port it to a cheap VoIP provider.

R's, John

PS:

Can't have ISDN and DSL on the same pair.

Reply to
John Levine

Distinctive ringing, at one time I had 3 numbers on one pair.

-Hudson

Reply to
Hudson Leighton

My daughter in central Ohio has two numbers on one line - one for the home and one for the business. Distinctive ring patterns identify which number was called. Signaling System 7 should accommodate two numbers (or more - but I don't know about this for sure) on one pair.

Regards.

Charles G. Gray Senior Lecturer, Telecommunications Oklahoma State University - Tulsa (918) 594-8433

Reply to
Gray, Charles

It is possible to have two numbers on one line. It is typically called teen line and has two distinctive ringtones. However, it may be that they do not allow it for business lines. You can check the tariff to determine if it is allowed.

David Hunt

Reply to
David Hunt

[snip: lots of good options suggested by moderator Bill Horne]

If your local exchange carrier offers "Ring-Mate" (tm), or whatever it calls its brand of selective ring service, providing one or more supplemental phone numbers with different ringing cadences on the same line, that might be a way to go. The service certainly provides multiple numbers on the same line and the porting of your old numbers should not be too difficult, especially if done at the same time.

The cost of this service is typically only a few dollars per month, maybe $3 or so, and much less than a separate additional line.

(If you are not familiar with selective ring, think of the old "party line" services which a line was shared by several subscribers, each of whom had a difference ring cadence.)

Keep in mind that, when placing and outgoing call, only the primary number will appear as caller ID or billing ANI. So, if you want to keep one of your numbers concealed, have the telco make it the secondary number and not the primary number.

Regards, Will

***** Moderator's Note *****

My thanks to everybody, and their brothers, aunts, uncles, nephews, cousins, sisters, brothers, parents, grandparents, and significant others, who pointed out the availability of party^h^h^h^h^hRingMate service.

Ya leave out one answer, and from then until the heat-death of the universe, it's "What about RingMate, Bill?". Jeesh! ;-)

Bill Horne Temporary Moderator

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Reply to
Will Roberts

My wife runs a chocolate shop and when she temporarily closed one location she had the phone number forwarded to the other. Both numbers rang on the same line (in a different town and exchange).

You had a clueless rep.

Not sure what to say about your landlord. Seems pretty silly to disallow another phone line, but not knowing the exact situation I can only speculate. I will point out that most modern phone wire has 2 pairs, so no additional wiring may be needed to accomodate a second line, but there could be insufficient pairs in the building drop or something.

Yep, that's what they called it. Oh, the 800 number that rang to the forwarded number continued to work as well.

Bill Ranck Blacksburg, Va.

Reply to
ranck

This was discussed in the past, but I remain confused over the difference between "ISDN" and "DSL". In the past, ISDN was supposed to be the big wave of the future, but then DSL came out and we heard little about ISDN after that. Could someone explain the differences, and why DSL replaced it?

Thanks.

***** Moderator's Note *****

I have always been puzzled by Ma Bell's distaste for ISDN: if there's someone reading this that knows The Real Truth(tm), PLEASE tell us why.

Bill Horne Temporary Moderator

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Reply to
hancock4

They are totally different services that bear no connection with one another and do not serve the same purposes.

ISDN is a data service that is intended for realtime data connection. Among other popular services, it is possible to provide digital telephone service from the exchange over ISDN. This was quite popular in Europe.

Some people have used ISDN for internet access over the years, but it is cumbersome and badly tariffed.

For the most part the primary users of ISDN in the US are people who have realtime data and need fixed latency connections, like radio stations doing remote broadcasts. Odds are when you tune into a radio broadcast of a sports event, the connection from the stadium to the radio station is an ISDN link carrying MUSCAM-compressed audio. It is a switched service... the engineer plugs a codec unit into the line at the stadium, and dials the ISDN circuit at the station.

DSL is a whole bunch of different services entirely, but they are all involving non-realtime data connections of various sources, often piggybacked onto POTS pairs. It does not replace ISDN, it is an utterly different thing. As far as I know, DSL is _only_ used to deliver internet service. No point to point links are available and it is not switched. Like all internet services, there is no real guarantee of latency or that your packets will even arrive at the other end.

--scott

Reply to
Scott Dorsey

Scott Adams worked on ISDN for PacBell. Does that explain where Dilbert came from?

ISDN-BRI was *telephone service*. Not just technically, but politically within Ma. But the fact that it was carrying data meant several things:

a) Internal warfare between the Voice and Data camps; perhaps not so much in the union crafts but also the mid-level folks.

b) Greed: the shiny-pants bean-counters were determined to charge by the minute. That doomed it.

Add to that:

High installation costs. ISDN BRI required better pair quality than voice. No so mucb better than Ma CLAIMED to have but rather better than reality, after decades of skimping on outside plant budgets. But since it was tariffed telco service; if you knew how to make a stink, you could get it.

[Note that Verizontal blew $$$$ on the software update for every CO, then figured out it was a P&L disaster.]

It's no longer marketed for Internet access as it's too slow to compete, but does have some real advantages for some apps. You can use it for fallback on DS1 failures; while awaiting same, it's the fax line, etc.

It is also widely used in large Centrex's. BRI allows you to have a fancy feature-full phone on your desk, with multiple line appearances and indicators and great conferencing etc... yet work over a 'n' mile long loop.

It delivers PERFECT voice quality; so quiet that you look down at the LED during silences to be sure the call is still going on. And it has real supervision. Plus; it offered remote maint. She could run a metallic loop test from the CO, and know, not guess, about the line issue.

But Ma pulled a real General Motors, and ended up shooting themselves in both feet. Too bad; they could have saved themselves a lot of long-term grief if only...

[I bet Fred Goldstein has some comments as well...]
Reply to
David Lesher

ISDN is tariffed telephone service; with 128Kbps of data in the last mile. It moved the A->D converter into your phone.

But it was marketed as a Internet access solution; for which it was not a big enough improvement to matter [by the time She got around to deploying it.]

DSL is a rework of Ma's attempt to offer Video on Demand via copper. It works in the spectrum above voice, on the same pair....for a limited distance.

It's NOT a tariffed service; there are no guarantees you can get it, keep it working, etc. But if it works, it's much faster downstream than ISDN was.

Reply to
David Lesher

The following excerpt is from the Wikipedia article on ISDN:

In Germany, ISDN is very popular with an installed base of 25 million channels (29% of all subscriber lines in Germany as of 2003 and 20% of all ISDN channels worldwide). Due to the success of ISDN, the number of installed analog lines is decreasing. Deutsche Telekom (DTAG) offers both BRI and PRI. Competing phone companies often offer ISDN only and no analog lines. Because of the widespread availability of ADSL services, ISDN is today primarily used for voice and fax traffic, but is still very popular thanks to the pricing policy of German telecommunication providers. Today ISDN (BRI) and ADSL/VDSL are often bundled on the same line, mainly because the combination of ADSL with an analog line has no cost advantage over a combined ISDN-ADSL line.

Other replies to this thread seemed to rule-out the ADSL/ISDN combination; could someone please elaborate?

Michael

Reply to
Michael Grigoni

Thanks to all for their explanations.

One comment . . . several posters used the term "Ma Bell" to refer to the phone company. IMHO, that term is obsolete in that it only referred to the old unified Bell System prior to divesture. Once divesture occured each individual Baby Bell as well as the long- distance AT&T went their own way. Further, the advent of "competition" resulted in cost cutting and reduced service quality. The days where a service and equipment in Florida matched to that in Oregon are gone. (Indeed, even before divesture the Operating Companies had variations in service offerings and service quality).

I point this out because problems one Baby Bell might have in one city won't necessarily occur in other cities, even of the same Baby Bell. For example, Verizon today is a merger of multiple companies, each with their own personality--GTE, Bell Atlantic, Nynex, and various cellular units. Those units in turn are made up of various companies each with their own personality (e.g. NY Telephone was different than New England Bell, and GTE contained various Independents of different heritages.) Remember also each state has its own level of regulation and history of services. And as we know, today's at&t is a entirely different company, having been bought out.

I do wish the various telephone providers would be consistent in their naming of special services. Some services are consistent, such as Call Waiting. But others have varying names, such as the special ring associated with a number.

Unfortunately, due to the pressures of marketing, services and their names and costs are purposely changed frequently. (At home I have flat rate national long distance, and every month they change the name of the service as it appears on the bill.)

***** Moderator's Note *****

Ma Bell has set her minions to the task of convincing the public and the regulators that she no longer exists. I'll talk to her later this week, and I'll let her know the plan is still on track.

Bill Horne Temporary Moderator

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Reply to
hancock4

Beyond the political issues, there's technical botches in the North American version of ISDN that makes it painful to install, with careful configuration of both ends of the line needed. In Europe and Asia, it's plug and play, not much harder than an analog phone.

ISDN comes in two speeds, BRI which is two 64K "bearer" (voice or data) channels and a 16K data control channel on a regular twisted pair, and PRI which is 23B and 1D on a T1. BRI is pretty much dead, but PRI is quite popular as a way to provide trunks to a PBX since it has perfect voice quality and flexible control that can handle all of the stuff that a PBX needs to do, e.g. direct inward dialing and providing per-extension caller-id on outbound calls, and unlike a plain T1 lets you dynamically assign channels rather than having fixed assignments to inbound and outbound.

R's, John

Reply to
John Levine

I don't understand . . .

For better or worse, what was Ma Bell--the old unified Bell System--no longer exists.

While the old Bell System wasn't perfect, it's main objective was excellent service at a good price, and [it] strove to [provide that]. After divesture it became a mostly unregulated competitive environment of multiple companies and the main objectives were profit and market- share, which do not at all necessarily tie to service quality. If any customer's request is too difficult to fulfill, they won't bother and [they'll] allow the customer to go elsewhere--because the competitors--who compete by lower prices--are all doing the same thing or much worse. The public no longer deals with a highly trained and carefully recruited Service Representative, but a salesperson on commission. Outside of Western Electric, the Bell System tried very hard not to lay people off in lean times, even when converting manual exchanges to dial service. But today--as we saw in the AT&T article-- employees come and go in a revolving door.

As to the competition, when my neighbor switched to cable phone service, the installer left and her phone didn't work for three days until they sent someone out to fix their errors; and that's typical.

***** Moderator's Note *****

The Unified New Bell System is now run by a secret cabal of former Bell System employees. We^h^hThey control the current executives via the Instrument of Obedience which was implanted shortly after they were recruited. Coded messages are sent to them as super-audible tones that can only be heard through the IOO implants. Everything is under control.

Bill "Where's my medication?" Horne Temporary Moderator

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We have a new address for email submissions: telecomdigestmoderator atsign telecom-digest.org. This is only for those who submit posts via email: if you use a newsreader or a web interface to contribute to the digest, you don't need to change anything.

Reply to
hancock4

Just an observation--before divesture it was the U.S. that had the best telephone plant and Europe and Asia much weaker infrastructure. Now today the situation is reversed.

Reply to
hancock4

I guess I'm the last one to know, but AT&T no longer maintains the Toll-Free Directory :-)

Shows you how much I call it. Apparently Tellme administers it. I found this out because the company I'm an agent for gave me $35 setup, $3/month recurring charges AND $1.25 for every listing given out!!!

My question is How do I get into the Tellme database? Their web site is pretty vague about listings.

I already covered Switchboard and inter800.com.

Carl

Reply to
Carl Navarro

Michael Grigoni wrote in :

I am typing this over an ADSL+ISDN line, so that combination is available, in the Netherlands.

The difference is that ADSL over POTS lines is known as 'Annex A' and has a slightly higher theoretical upstream rate than ADSL over ISDN lines which is 'Annex B'. Because of the higher bandwidth of an ISDN line (it is in theory a 144 kilobit baseband line) more frequency space is reserved.

Annex A versus Annex B requires different types of ADSL modems and different types of DSLAMs (the equipment in the central office). I can imagine certain places which have very low rates of ISDN adaptation to not offer ISDN+ADSL over one copper pair because of the high cost of the special DSLAM with very few customers actually using the service.

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has more.

Koos van den Hout

Reply to
Koos van den Hout

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