Multiline cell phones?

December 14, 2006 8:28 AM

What cell phone providers will allow you to have two phone lines/ #'s on one phone?

I know that T-Mobile won't, and they claim it's a technical restriction with GSM and simm cards, so I'm pretty sure that means that Cingular is out as well.

Basically, I need to retain my old Portland, OR (503) area code number, which I've had for nine years or so, but I need to have my local (979) number for work as well. I've got this set up right now with T-Mobile where I have two phones and two simm cards and one phone simply has forward all calls turned on... but this means that I get charged twice for minutes that come in on the forwarding line, and I have to maintain two accounts. (which is $$$.) It'd be much easier if I could have a multiline phone and choose which number to dial out from.

Bonus if the provider doesn't suck as much as T-Mobile, customer-service wise.

posted by SpecialK to technology (8 comments total)

I don't know of any North American providers that allow this, although it's available in Asia. Of course, they're ahead of us in terms of feature-rich phone services.

My phone (Motorola V635) has the ability to address a multi-line SIM, and some phones can handle two SIMs at once, but no such thing is supported by any carrier in North America as far as I know.
posted by Dipsomaniac at 8:32 AM on December 14, 2006

port your number to a VOIP provider and have it forward to your work phone. Most VOIP providers can prepend a caller ID (if your phone supports that, I know mine doesn't) value as well so you know where it's coming from.
posted by evilelvis at 8:34 AM on December 14, 2006

I did it with Nextel. It was very nice - both on one Nextel SIM, both had their own settings like forwarding, ring tones, voicemail boxes.

I could select which line I wanted to call out with, but I could answer either when it rang easily.

I miss it a lot with Cingular. I have 2 lines with them and just forward one sim to the other, then the 2nd sim just sits here on my desk.

BTW the phone I used was the i830, but I think my i90 had the feature too.
posted by thilmony at 9:49 AM on December 14, 2006

Sprint/Nextel info.
posted by blue mustard at 10:01 AM on December 14, 2006

It's not a GSM limitation, it's a US GSM provider limitation, as in they don't see there being a large enough market for such a service to make the development time on their billing and other backend systems worth it to them.

In Europe, it's called Alternate Line Service.

As evilelvis mentioned, the best solution is a VoIP provider with cheap or free forwarding. Alternatively you could port that number to Cingular rather quickly and use their soon to be ended to new subscribers feature called FastForward, which gives you unlimited call forwarding for a few bucks a month. IIRC, they're going to stop offering it on the 28th.

It would be so much easier if they'd just offer ALS.
posted by wierdo at 11:20 AM on December 14, 2006

I wanted to have my personal line, with my personal bill, share the same (work-owned) hardware as my work line, on the company bill. Nextel couldn't do it. I'm still not sure what the point of putting 2 lines on 1 phone is, if you can't bill them separately, but I guess situations like this come up every so often.
posted by Myself at 12:50 PM on December 14, 2006

Supposedly there is a technical restriction built into all US Wireless networks to prevent two MTNs (Mobile Telephone Number) from being active at the same time. You can get a dual-NAM phone which allows you to switch back and forth on Verizon Wireless but only one line will be active at a time. I'm fairly certain this is the case for all US carriers.
posted by Octoparrot at 5:37 PM on December 14, 2006

Maaaaaan, I SO want this. May have even asked here about it.

I want a line that I answer and a bullshit line to give to everyone who I have to give a phone number to but don't ever want to hear from. Friends and family and work get one number; Utilities, vendors, stores, and whoever else get the bullshit number. The bullshit number is on silent. I never answer the bullshit line unless I'm expecting something and have turned the ringer on. I check the voicemail once a week maybe. Those robot dialers can just call me till their diodes burn out and I will never answer or even hear it ring.

Actually, I want three. Home, work, bullshit. Don't call me on the weekends, work, unless you just like immediate no-ring voicemail.

I would think now that everybody has a cellphone, and so many people also have a work cell phone, or have home/work using the same line with the unwanted cost/minute intermingling that implies, that this would actually be a very popular service. Nobody wants to keep up with two phones or sort out separate costs from a single bill. I guess it would hurt handset sales though, so maybe the industry doesn't want it.

I also think it would be neat to be able to easily add or remove numbers. Your handset and "home" number would always go with you wherever you go. But when you leave a job, you leave that work number with them so you never get any calls from that job after that. They give it to your replacement. And your new job gives you a new one that you add to your phone for the duration of your employment there.

Seems like it ought to be possible on a single SIM. The carrier would just assign two numbers to it in the system, route the call to your handset whenever a call came in for either, and insert some identifier in the incoming signal that would tell your phone which profile to associate with it.

Bam!
posted by kookoobirdz at 8:53 PM on December 14, 2006