Call Hunting / Ring My numbers

[dpeeri]

Would be nice if we could recieve incoming calls on more than 1 device. Call forwarding, but while maintaining the ringing on our main phone. 

An unusual request that might be difficult to impliment, but I'm putting it out there. The company that used to offer this called it "One Number" but doesn't offer it anymore.

[brobinson5662]

Hey @dpeeri,

Might be slightly off the mark but there is a company in Vancouver that does this for access into apartment buildings. The door rings a line that is forwarded to more than one phone (up to 5) connecting the call to the first line that picks up.

The company is called Easy Buzzer (www.easybuzzer.com) they might have what you're looking for. 🙂

[Gee]

It is possible, but not with your Public Mobile number.  You will need to use a VoIP service.

If you really need to use your Public Mobile number, you can port it out to VoIP (it will cancel your account) and then sign up for a new Public Mobile number.

The VoIP service will ring up to 5 phones simultaneously

[dpeeri]

I know how to do this with VoIP. I don't want this.

VoIP means SMS will also be managed by  VoIP company, which is not acceptable to me. I need the company that is hosting the Call hunt to be a cell phone company, because only cell phone companies handle SMS and MMS without workarounds and frustrations.

[will13am]

Lol, google voice offers this exact feature.  The google forwarding service can ring a bunch of different numbers in hopes of locating you.  Too bad they will never bring the service to Canada.

[paulie]

Would be a nice feature for sure !

In the meantime how about forwarding your PublicMobile#  to a voip #  ?   Then the voip# can do the call hunting.  May not work perfectly to your needs, but might be a nice work around.

[dpeeri]

Yes, that does work, however you lose the ability to answer the call from your cell phone. Unless you setup a SIP account on your phone, I probably don't want to go that route either.

[paulie]

hmm.... 

how about your cell phone rings, then after certain amount of rings and not answered it forwards to voip.  Then on the voip# it rings your cell and other phones ?     Possible infinate loop, but would possibly work. 

Also to help with the infinate loop, could you set your cell phone rings to max ( beleive it can be 6 rings), then if not answered your it's forwarded to a voip# .  The voip# can do the hunting and still ring your cell.  Since the voip# will stop a 4 rings, it can then take your voice mail.  You can then turn on voicemail to email option at the voip# so the email comes to your phone and you can listen to the voicemail.  

[dpeeri]

I've tried the loops before. I got pretty far, I found an app for Android called root call blocker and configured it to forward all calls unless the same person tried called twice in 60 seconds. This allowed all the phones to ring at the same time, although answering a call on my phone meant it was looping to the VoIP provider and back. It was interesting but still not good enough. Since a cell phone is slow at recieving the first ring, there was an accumulated 10 seconds of delay before the called looped back to the cell phone. I suppose I could have tried increasing the # rings to voicemail, but at some point I gave up on the ghetto nature of this setup.

[paulie]

For the texting portion, you could use WhatsApp.  You can also use WhatsApp on your laptop or tablet so you are not limited to your phone. 

Also if you have a WindowsPhone, you can use Skype SMS relay.  Works well on laptop.  You can essentially text out or receive texts through Skype app, but it's tied in with your phone.  Again only for WindowsPhone.  It was to be coming to Android phones too, but no official word yet.