How to Forward a Cell Phone
Call forwarding is a feature available to business phone systems and home phone service, but some cell phone users don’t know that their mobile phone can access call forward features too.
Call Forwarding feature description
Call forwarding acts to send an incoming call to a different phone number. It comes with several different flavors:
Call Forwarding All Calls – All incoming calls to the phone are routed to a different phone number. The user specifies a destination phone number.
Call Forwarding No Answer – When a phone is not answered, the calls to it are forwarded to a phone number specified by the user.
Call Forward Busy – If the called phone is in use, calls to it are forwarded to a phone number specified by the user.
Call
forwarding is a feature that cell phone users without even knowing it. When a
call comes into a cell phone and it is busy or does not get answered, the
incoming call is forwarded to the voice mail provided by the mobile phone
service.
Call Forwarding uses
Vacation. A good example of the usefulness of Call forwarding is when the cell phone owner is on vacation. The user punches in the access code and sends all calls to a different number. Perhaps a family member or a coworker.
Customer Service. If a user is talking on the phone and wants to make sure that callers get to talk to a person rather than to voice mail, forward the phone to a different destination phone number.
Meetings. If an important phone call is expected during a meeting, cell phone users can forward calls to a person who will handle the call.
Outside service area. If a cell phone user is working in an area that has no cellular reception, the user can forward calls from the cell phone to a land line phone at the work site.
The majority of Call Forwarding users use the feature to send calls to voice mail, but what if a cell phone user doesn’t like the voice mail services offered by the phones service provider? Call Forwarding is also used to forward calls to alternative voice mail services. This allows cell phone users a high degree of flexibility for choosing a voicemail service to use.
A good example of using Call Forwarding to accomplish this is to set up a cell phone to use Google Voice voice mail. Here’s how it’s done.
1. Sign up for a Google Voice account. If a user is not already a Google Voice subscriber, go to www.google.com/voice to sign up. When signing up, associate a cell phone number with the Google Voice number.
2. Log in to Google Voice. Click the “Settings” link in the upper right hand corner of the screen.
3. On the phones tap, click the “Activate Google Voice Mail on this phone.”
4. The instructions vary depending on the cell phone’s service provider, but will display on a pop-up window. For illustration, imagine if the user’s cell phone is on the Sprint network. The instructions will tell you to dial *28 followed by the user’s Google Voice number. *28 is the call forward busy / no answer code for Sprint. Each cellular service has its own code. For cell phone numbers on other networks, Google Voice displays the appropriate access code.
5. When a caller calls the forwarded cell phone, callers are routed to that user’s Google Voice mailbox rather than to the user’s Sprint Voice Mail mailbox.
6. Cancel Call Forwarding from the cell phone at any time by dialing *38 (for Sprint).
7. Many cell phones have Call Forwarding built into the phone’s menu. On those phones, dialing the Call Forwarding access codes is not necessary. Call the phone network’s customer service for assistance if necessary.
8. Users with cell phones on other networks should visit their service provider’s web site to get the Call Forwarding access and cancellation codes.
9. This procedure will work to forward cell phone calls to any ten-digit phone number. Google Voice is used here for illustration purposes.
Special considerations
Users of cell phone call forwarding features have problems if:
- The user forgets to cancel forwarding after vacations, meetings or completion of work at a remote site.
- The user types in the wrong ten digit phone number to have calls sent to. When this happens, strangers start receiving the user’s phone numbers.
- The user forgets what the Call Forwarding codes are to activate and deactivate the feature on the phone’s network. In this case, users can call their customer service number or look up the information on their service provider’s web site.
Call Forwarding, long a convenience of business and home traditional phone services, is very useful to cell phone users willing to venture outside the box to get the most out of their cell phone service.