Brad Ideas - Cell carriers, let us have more than one phone on the same number - Comments

clone it

Anonymous — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 12:35:21 -0800

Just get CDMA workshop and clone it yourself, fluck the cell phone company.

i agree

i agree — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 23:31:25 -0700

I totally agree you have it layer out functionally but is have to careful of the federal law. What I would want is to take my old basic reliable phone when my current phone isnt good or on a trip and such. To switch them quickly

Your cell phone at home...

Stuart Lynne — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 16:46:50 -0700

You can get home portables where the base station acts as a Bluetooth headset to your cellphone. So you just plug your cell into the charger next to the base station and then use any of the portables you have scattered around the house (e.g. Panasonic allows up to eight.)

multiple cell phones

Anonymous — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 11:32:27 -0700

Everything mentioned above to try to explain why the cell phone companies do not allow more than one phone per number is ridiculous. Software can take care of all the arguments.

But what is missed is the real reason to allow more than one. If you give up your home land-line so as to use your cell phone 100%, you must carry it constantly and everywhere in your house. And the wife does not have any access unless she has her own separate cell phone. Carry it to the garage, to bed, to the shower. If you leave it on the charger in one room you cannot answer it anywhere else.

Remember 20-30 years ago when the land-line companies pretty much did the same ? Only they could install an extension and the phone could only be bought from them. Now it is the cell phone companies doing nearly the same. They control everything about the cells.

Hopefully some day their ignorant rules and regulations will go the same way as Ma Bell.

hey i just got a new phone

Anonymous — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 13:01:23 -0700

hey i just got a new phone because my old samsung vice screen broke, but the funny thing is, whenever my new phone gets a text, the old vice will also ring. two phones, one number.

how about...

joe — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 14:57:17 -0700

I think moreso than having a second phone for emergencies in ur car or office would be for people like myself that work in maintenance and need my phone to check emails for repairs, log onto my jobs network to edit and close open requests.. I work in dust, water, gas, oil etc.. I have a blackberry right now and its only 4 months old and is basically ruined, barely works right.. It would be convenient for me to have say a windows based device that I can use for work and then my blackberry or an htc evo @ home for personal use.. I'm trying to have my company get me a paid work phone, then yeah I can probably do call forwarding.. I'd rather have one phone# for everything... Couldn't they just make it so that if both phones are on they both simply just don't work.. Basically when I get home from work I would shut my work phone off in order for my personal phone to be active and vice versa!? That would be amazingg!

Well its definitely easily

Anonymous — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 11:53:20 -0700

Well its definitely easily possible in voip services but GSM has certain limitations while registering in HLR, which can be overcome if the cell provider realy wants to, regarding the cloning part of it i would not buy that point as IMEIs are something that can be reprogrammed and hence this is a major issue i you want to monitor clonning, i wrk fr a telecom fraud team and hence i am aware f it. But still feature is some thing very consumer friendly.

Handy, but not quite there

brad — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 10:08:54 -0800

They are actually giving you two seemingly cloned SIMs. It seems to only ring one at a time, depending on which you called from last. (It says it also depends on where you received a call last which is harder to fathom.)

Ideally I would have it so that it always rings them both so you don’t have to do anything explicit to switch. Of course telcos will want to be sure you are not sharing the phone among two people, so I can see the need to make an explicit switch though they could also just limit the number of switches (ie. where you call or receive from) but always allow all to ring.

T-mobile has TWIN sim

The Digital Coach — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 18:24:36 -0800

See description at this site.
http://www.t-mobile.sk/en/!pages.get?id=3204

Twin Sim Cards

The Digital Coach — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 18:12:18 -0800

I was in Europe in 2008 and their carriers have "Twin" sim cards. One in your phone and the other in your car. If you forget your mobile at home and someone calls your ONE phone number it still rings in your car. The technology/method exists. Question is where is it in the great USA? Anyone know?

This doesn't really work at all

brad — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 21:42:06 -0800

The goal is to have only one cell phone account, and to be able to use the old phones when you forget your main one.

That includes forgetting to put your main one in the dock.

You could dock your cellphone to multiple cordless phones.

workaround — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 16:54:11 -0800

I have a DockNTalk, which is a device that allows you to dock your cell phone usually by bluetooth connection so that you can make and receive calls from multiple land phones connected into your cell phone instead of into the land phone company jack. If you have wall phone jacks that aren't connected to the phone company you can then connect the dockntalk into a jack and have I believe up to 5 wall phones ringing at the same time when someone calls your cell phone and 5 people can be talking to each other on those phones at the same time just like a landline (which wouldn't happen if you had more than 1 cell phone with the same number, unless I'm wrong about that.)

Now there are other docking stations you can dock your cell phone too. Some dock multiple cell phones, the dockntalk I own doesn't. Just google "dock cell phone" and see what device would work for you. They are kind of expensive. The dockntalk requires a bluetooth adapter for bluetooth phones which is also kind of expensive (mostly all cell phones now only connect to it via bluetooth) and another expense with dockntalk is everytime they have a firmware update to support newer cell phones -- which isn't that frequent, you have to send it back to phonelabs and pay them to do this. Although, this pales in comparison to the expenses you would incur if you had multiple cell phones with the same number -- each with their own monthly fee attached.

Really make sure your cell phone can dock because my old moto krazer couldn't with the dockntalk -- it would drop the voice so the other person couldn't hear you, my older moto worked fine but that didn't allow for caller ID; my samsung and my blackberry curve work fine with caller ID.

I used to use a cellsocket that basically did the same thing and you'll see that when you google, but this is pretty old tech and all new phones won't work on that.

I know this doesn't completely resolve the issue since this requires a power outlet to function (you may find one that doesn't) and you're not using multiple cell phones to talk on (just multiple connections using one cell phone), but you could take your docking station with you along with a few cordless phones and then have "more than one phone on the same [mobile] number."

Revive the dead thread

Lucas — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 11:22:45 -0800

I personally would find the two phone/one number thing very useful! Right now I am interested in purchasing the new droid phone, however, I recently found out that the droid does not allow tethering. I use my current phone to tether a lot since I travel for a living. If I had two phones to my same number, I could use my old phone to tether and my new phone for everything else

Backup Phone

TreeDude — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 08:43:42 -0800

I know this is a dead thread, but I stumbled across it and I think it would be great to have an "extra" phone to use if my fancy scamchy smart-phone dies, runs out of battery, or gets run over by a rampaging donkey.

Two cell phones, one telephone number

Anonymous — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 10:35:37 -0800

I bought a Virgin Mobile pay-as-you-go phone in August. I recently lost it for around 3 days, and in the interim, thought it was gone for good. So I bought a slightly better phone with the same company. It would be nice to have two with all of the same information stored on them, in case one is temporarily misplaced, stolen or destroyed.

Cell carriers, let us have more than one phone on the same number

brad — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 15:14:36 -0800

Everybody’s got old cell phones, which sit in closets. Why don’t the wireless carriers let customers cheaply have two or more phones on the same line. That would mean that when a call came in, both phones would ring (and your landlines if you desire) and you could answer in either place. You could make calls from either phone, though not both at the same time.

Right now they offer family plans, which let you have a 2nd “line” on the same account. That doesn’t save much money for the 2nd, though the 3rd and 4th are typically only $10 extra. That’s a whole extra number and account, however.

Letting customers do this should be good for the cell companies. You would be more likely to make a cell call. People would leave cells in their cars, or at other haunts (office, home or even in a coat pocket) for the “just in case I forget my cell” moments. That means more minutes billed.

The only downside is you might see people trying to share, both the very poor, or some couples, or perhaps families wanting to give a single number to a group of kids. While for most people the party line arrangement would be inconvenient, if it becomes a real problem, a number of steps could be taken to avoid it:

They know where the phones are. Thus don’t allow phone A to make/answer a call a short interval after phone B if they are far apart. If they are 1 hour apart, require an hour’s time.
To really stop things, require the non-default phones to register by calling a special number. When one phone registers, the others can’t make calls. Put limits on switching the active phone, possibly based on phone location as above.
Shortly after registering, or making/receiving a call, only the active phone receives calls.

I don’t think these steps are necessary, but if implemented they would make sharing very impractical and thus this service could be at no extra charge, or at worst a nominal charge of a buck or two. It could also be charged for only in months or days it’s actually used.

This is a great service for the customer and should make money for the cell co. So why don’t they?