Can one have 1 phone with 2 lines?

I have 2 cingular accounts. 1 for bus & 1 personal. Would like to avoid
carrying 2 phones. Is this possible?

TIA

Barbara

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› See More: Can one have 1 phone with 2 lines?

On Sat, 18 Nov 2006 20:58:46 -0800, "Barbara L" <[email protected]>
wrote in <[email protected]>:

>I have 2 cingular accounts. 1 for bus & 1 personal. Would like to avoid
>carrying 2 phones. Is this possible?

Not with Cingular, other than carrying two SIMs, and swapping them.

--
Best regards, FAQ FOR CINGULAR WIRELESS:
John Navas <http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cingular_Wireless_FAQ>

Barbara L wrote:
> I have 2 cingular accounts. 1 for bus & 1 personal. Would like to avoid
> carrying 2 phones. Is this possible?

Do you want two different numbers or differently billed accounts?

I have 2 different number s already with 2 different phones. Billed
differently is not an issue. But it sounds like from the previous post its a
no go. Don't want to be swapping Sims cards. Need to be answers either when
it rings.

Are there any handsfree kits similar to the parrot 3100+ for in the car or
one for use in home office use that will allow 2 phones to be paired at once
via blue tooth?


"decaturtxcowboy" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> Barbara L wrote:
>> I have 2 cingular accounts. 1 for bus & 1 personal. Would like to avoid
>> carrying 2 phones. Is this possible?
>
> Do you want two different numbers or differently billed accounts?

Barbara L wrote:
> I have 2 cingular accounts. 1 for bus & 1 personal. Would like to avoid
> carrying 2 phones. Is this possible?
>
> TIA
>
> Barbara
>
>

Why not use call forwarding on one of the phones?

Steve

On Sun, 19 Nov 2006 13:58:05 GMT, Steve <[email protected]> wrote in
<[email protected]>:

>Barbara L wrote:
>> I have 2 cingular accounts. 1 for bus & 1 personal. Would like to avoid
>> carrying 2 phones. Is this possible?

>Why not use call forwarding on one of the phones?

Works for incoming calls, albeit at substantial extra cost, but not for
(the cost of) outgoing calls.

--
Best regards, FAQ FOR CINGULAR WIRELESS:
John Navas <http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cingular_Wireless_FAQ>

Barbara L wrote:
> I have 2 different number s already with 2 different phones. Billed
> differently is not an issue. But it sounds like from the previous post its a
> no go. Don't want to be swapping Sims cards. Need to be answers either when
> it rings.

Two options...

You can forward you personal phone's number to your biz phone's number.
But as John points out, call forwarding gets expensive

You can sign up for an 800 number for your personal phone number and
have it ring into your biz phone's number.

As far as having two telephone literally assigned to one phone, nope.

In article <[email protected]>, [email protected] says...
> Barbara L wrote:
> > I have 2 cingular accounts. 1 for bus & 1 personal. Would like to avoid
> > carrying 2 phones. Is this possible?
>
> Why not use call forwarding on one of the phones?
>
Here's a few reasons.

1) Easier to see which line the call was coming in on.

2) If the call detail is reported seperately it would be much easier
come tax time or expense report time to identify the business calls.

3) One problem I hit using CF is that all OUTGOING calls on the phone
you're carrying go out with THAT caller ID--you may not WANT personal
callers having your business number and vice versa.

4) With multiple lines you could "turn off" one line and have it go to
voice mail while still receiving calls on the other line.

5) And speaking of voice mail--with multiple lines you could have
SEPERATE voice mail boxes. If you CF a cell phone to another using "fwd
all calls" you bypass the VM for that phone--all unanswered callers are
going to get the VM for the 2nd phone.

Many, if not most, GSM phones support ALS (alternate line service). Come
to think of it I think my TDMA StarTac even had that ability although it
was called something else. Why the carriers don't offer it is beyond
me--I suspect the number of users wanting it would easily exceed the
dollars lost by consolidating two seperate accounts.
--
Jud
Dallas TX USA

On 2006-11-19, Jud Hardcastle wrote:
>> > I have 2 cingular accounts. 1 for bus & 1 personal. Would like to avoid
>> > carrying 2 phones. Is this possible?
[...]
> Many, if not most, GSM phones support ALS (alternate line service). Come
> to think of it I think my TDMA StarTac even had that ability although it
> was called something else. Why the carriers don't offer it is beyond
> me--I suspect the number of users wanting it would easily exceed the
> dollars lost by consolidating two seperate accounts.

I think the GSM function you mention is simpler than you seem to
think. It allows you to have two phone numbers associated with
the same SIM, but I don't think it allows two accounts to be serviced
by the phone. There doesn't seem to be a way to specify which "line"
you are using to make outbound calls, for example, let alone alternate
voice mail or different preferred carrier lists or anything like that.

I have a China Unicom SIM which uses the function to provide the phone
with both a China phone number and a Hong Kong phone number. It doesn't
seem to be able to do anything more complicated than this, though.

Dennis Ferguson

In article <[email protected]>,
[email protected] says...
>
> There are dual NAM phones for CDMA and iDEN that work seamlessly. GSM is
> older technology and apparently they never thought of the scenario where
> someone would want to have two phone numbers on one phone.

On the contrary, ALS (alternate line service) is very much a part of the
GSM spec and is supported by many GSM phones including my last two. The
problem is with the carriers not with GSM or the phone makers.
--
Jud
Dallas TX USA

At 19 Nov 2006 13:31:34 -0800 SMS wrote:

> There are dual NAM phones for CDMA and iDEN that work seamlessly. GSM
is older technology and apparently they never thought of the scenario
where someone would want to have two phone numbers on one phone.

My old analog and TDMA phones also had this ability, but I never found
a carrier that would actually support it- about a hundred years ago (or
so it seems!) I tried to have Cingular as a primary NAM, and AT&T PPD
as a secondary (for cheaper roaming- this was long before "national
plans" were common), but AT&T told me they couldn't activate my phone
because the ESN was already in use by another carrier! I later called
Cingular to see if I could put a aecond Cingular number in the phone
(just academically, because I didn't actually need two Cingular numbers
in one phone,) and they said no, because their billing system couldn't
handle two different numbers having a common ESN!

Does Verizon, Sprint/Nextel actually let you put two accounts in one
phone, or, like with Cingular, does something as mundane as a dumb
database restriction preclude them from accomplishing it
technologically?

GSM (and iDen) should, if anything, be an easier system to accomplish
this with since the phones themselves are "dumb" and the subscriber's
info is in the SIM. Building a phone that could handle two SIMs should
not even require the cooperation of the mobile operator, like it would
with a CDMA network (unless you built some kind of two-in-one phone
with two discrete ESN's.)
The only real answer I can imagine must be that demand for a dual-SIM
phone is just too low to engineer and market such a beast profitably
(particularly when the kludgy "dual-SIM adapter" method already exists,
and today's consumer changes phones almost as often as undergarments...)


--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

Barbara L wrote:
> I have 2 cingular accounts. 1 for bus & 1 personal. Would like to avoid
> carrying 2 phones. Is this possible?
>
> TIA
>
> Barbara
>
>

There are dual SIM adapters though the way the auto-switch works if
funky. You have to divert the calls from the SIM that is off-line to the
SIM that is on-line. But at least for outgoing calls you can switch
between SIMs.

There are dual NAM phones for CDMA and iDEN that work seamlessly. GSM is
older technology and apparently they never thought of the scenario where
someone would want to have two phone numbers on one phone.

On 2006-11-19, SMS <[email protected]> wrote:
> There are dual NAM phones for CDMA and iDEN that work seamlessly. GSM is
> older technology and apparently they never thought of the scenario where
> someone would want to have two phone numbers on one phone.

I have a China Unicom SIM which has two numbers, one in +86 and one
in +852. It works fine in every GSM phone I've plugged it into.

Dennis Ferguson

Todd Allcock wrote:
> At 19 Nov 2006 13:31:34 -0800 SMS wrote:
>
>> There are dual NAM phones for CDMA and iDEN that work seamlessly. GSM
> is older technology and apparently they never thought of the scenario
> where someone would want to have two phone numbers on one phone.
>
> My old analog and TDMA phones also had this ability, but I never found
> a carrier that would actually support it- about a hundred years ago (or
> so it seems!) I tried to have Cingular as a primary NAM, and AT&T PPD
> as a secondary (for cheaper roaming- this was long before "national
> plans" were common), but AT&T told me they couldn't activate my phone
> because the ESN was already in use by another carrier! I later called
> Cingular to see if I could put a aecond Cingular number in the phone
> (just academically, because I didn't actually need two Cingular numbers
> in one phone,) and they said no, because their billing system couldn't
> handle two different numbers having a common ESN!
>
> Does Verizon, Sprint/Nextel actually let you put two accounts in one
> phone, or, like with Cingular, does something as mundane as a dumb
> database restriction preclude them from accomplishing it
> technologically?

It's definitely available from Nextel, as Nextel was trying to sell
personal numbers on the phones that my wife's office supplies to all the
employees. It was rather amusing because every field person has to use
their own personal Verizon phone when going to areas of the county that
have no Nextel support (and no GSM support for that matter). I don't
know the braniac that chose Nextel, as the primary clients that are out
in the field that require on-site visits are the ones that are so far
from any medical facilities that they can't come in in person. In both
Santa Clara and San Mateo counties there are very rural pockets that
have very limited wireless coverage. They'll usually have AMPS, and
occasionally some CDMA (since the AMPS towers also have CDMA equipment),
but iDEN and GSM haven't made it out there yet, and probably never will.
I think that someone thought that PTT would be useful, but actually it
is unusable in this type of business for privacy reasons.

I don't think anyone took Nextel up on the dual NAM service.

I know that there are one or two phones, in Europe and Asia, with two
SIM slots, and that have circuitry so that both SIMS can be active at
once. But I don't think there are any that have 800 MHz and 1900 MHz.

Dennis Ferguson wrote:
> On 2006-11-19, SMS <[email protected]> wrote:
>> There are dual NAM phones for CDMA and iDEN that work seamlessly. GSM is
>> older technology and apparently they never thought of the scenario where
>> someone would want to have two phone numbers on one phone.
>
> I have a China Unicom SIM which has two numbers, one in +86 and one
> in +852. It works fine in every GSM phone I've plugged it into.

Are both numbers active at once, or do you have to manually switch
between them?

It is certainly possible to put two numbers on one SIM, but Cingular and
T-Mobile U.S. won't do it. T-Mobile in some other countries will do it.

The SIM adapters that allow two SIMS to be in a single SIM phone at once
require user selection of which number to use. It works fine for
outgoing calls of course, but since only one SIM is active at a time,
the non-active number will not go through. The vendor advises forwarding
the non-active number to the active number in the case of it not being
picked up.