sundance-communications.com/forum Forums General General Telephone & Systems Information Telco voice/fax detection routing?

Went to a new customer that has one physical line for her business. That physical line is advertised as her Business phone line. Now telco has a different number that is forwarded to the line and she advertises this number as her fax.

She says she was told by telco that when someone faxes to her "phantom" number, it will route to the fax machine. And when someone calls the phone line it will not route to the fax but will ring the phones.

This is not working and I've never heard telco offering a feature such as this, and I don't see how it's possible. She swore it worked before she got her new phone system about 1 year ago.

Has anyone heard of telco offering this? I told her we can put in a voice/fax routing device such as the Stick.

maybe the forwarded line is coming in with a different ring pattern ?

in our area Verizon calls it smart ring other carriers have different names for it and there are switch's that will route it

that's the only way I can see it working

Distinctive ringing and a fax can be set to pick up on the distinctive ring. Many use it instead of paying for a second line.

:thumb: Skip

we seem to be on the same wavelength today , Bill

Put your butt set (in monitor mode) on the line and dial both numbers. See if one line rings normally and the other number rings with two short rings. If so, look for a selective ringing switch on site - it may just be unplugged. Multi-Link's SR-2 works great in this application.

I didn't even know they made a switch for distinctive ring. The only ones I've been involved with it was an option in the fax itself. So I'd assume the switch is for faxes that don't have that option.

the last one used was a command communications cs5500 ,I used that for a gas staion where they needed a number to call into to check the tanks

I used one here for a long time , in fact it may still be hooked up in the back room

when the kids got to teenage years we let them have the home phone number and grabbed a smart ring number for ourselves the main line rang their rooms the smart ring went to us

I guess I've never looked, I didn't know the line share by command communications even did distinctive ring detection. Learn something every day.

Curiosity got the best of me and I looked in the users manual for the comswitch 5500, bigger than Dallas on the last page it tells you how to turn distinctive ring detect on and off. Never had the need for it so never looked.

Thanks for the info Skip and BobRobert, sure would be a lot nicer set up than doing it at the fax. :thumb: