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In telecommunications, remote call forwarding is a service feature that allows incoming calls to be forwarded to a remote call forwarding number, such as a cell phone or another office location, and is designated by the call receiver. [1] [2]
Customers may have a remote-forwarding telephone number in a central switching office without having any other local telephone service in that office.
One common purpose for this service is to enable customers to retain their telephone number when they move to a location serviced by a different telephone exchange. The service is useful for business customers with widely advertised numbers which appear on headed paper, vehicles and various marketing literature. When customers ring, their calls are forwarded to the new location.
Remote call forwarding is also a means for a suburban business to obtain a city-centre local number (with its full large-city coverage area) for inbound calls; while cheaper than a foreign exchange line, this can reduce long-distance telephony costs in markets where local calls are flat-rated but trunk calls are expensive.
One alternative to RCF is Caller Redirect whereby callers simply hear an intercept message notifying them that the number has changed. Another alternative is to port the existing number to a voice over IP carrier, which is not tied to a single physical location as the subscriber may be anywhere on broadband Internet. However, not all phone numbers can be ported.
Remote Call Forwarding (RCF) requires neither a physical telephone set nor physical input by customer to get calls forwarded.
In this respect, it differs from the (similarly named) Remote Access to Call Forwarding in that the number is attached to a physical line where it rings normally until a call is made to a remote number to enable redirection.
To activate Remote Access to Call Forwarding, a subscriber calls a provider-supplied Remote Access Directory Number, enters the telephone number of the line to be redirected along with a personal identification number (PIN), a vertical service code (such as 72# or *73) and the number to which the calls are to be forwarded.
Remote Access to Call Forwarding allows incoming calls to be diverted and answered elsewhere if a subscriber cannot use their telephone normally (for instance, the number is assigned to a lost or stolen wireless handset or to a landline in need of repair service). In some cases, a business which subscribes to standard call forwarding (*72) may be able to request temporary redirection of inbound calls when calling a telco repair service number (such as 6-1-1) to report a line outage.
Wide Area Telephone Service (WATS) was a flat-rate long-distance service for customer dial-type telecommunications in the service areas of the North American Numbering Plan (NANP).
Enhanced 911 is a system used in North America to automatically provide the caller's location to 911 dispatchers. 911 is the universal emergency telephone number in the region. In the European Union, a similar system exists known as E112 and known as eCall when called by a vehicle.
Caller identification is a telephone service, available in analog and digital telephone systems, including voice over IP (VoIP), that transmits a caller's telephone number to the called party's telephone equipment when the call is being set up. The caller ID service may include the transmission of a name associated with the calling telephone number, in a service called Calling Name Presentation (CNAM). The service was first defined in 1993 in International Telecommunication Union – Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) Recommendation Q.731.3.
A voicemail system is a computer-based system that allows people to leave a recorded message when the recipient is unable to answer the phone. The caller is prompted to leave a message and the recipient can retrieve said message at a later time.
A toll-free telephone number or freephone number is a telephone number that is billed for all arriving calls. For the calling party, a call to a toll-free number from a landline is free of charge. A toll-free number is identified by a dialing prefix similar to an area code. The specific service access varies by country.
Call waiting is a telephone service where a subscriber can accept a second incoming telephone call by placing an in-progress call on hold—and may also switch between calls. With some providers it can be combined with additional features such as conferencing, call forwarding, and caller ID. Call waiting is intended to alleviate the need to have more than one telephone line or number for voice communications.
Call forwarding, or call diversion, is a telephony feature of all telephone switching systems which redirects a telephone call to another destination, which may be, for example, a mobile or another telephone number where the desired called party is available. Call forwarding was invented by Ernest J. Bonanno.
A ringback number is a telephone number for a telephone line that automatically calls the line that the call was placed from, after the caller has hung up. The typical use of this facility is by telephone company technicians for testing a new installation or for trouble-shooting.
In telecommunications, a callback or call-back occurs when the originator of a call is immediately called back in a second call as a response.
Phone fraud, or more generally communications fraud, is the use of telecommunications products or services with the intention of illegally acquiring money from, or failing to pay, a telecommunication company or its customers.
GSM services are a standard collection of applications and features available over the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) to mobile phone subscribers all over the world. The GSM standards are defined by the 3GPP collaboration and implemented in hardware and software by equipment manufacturers and mobile phone operators. The common standard makes it possible to use the same phones with different companies' services, or even roam into different countries. GSM is the world's most dominant mobile phone standard.
In telecommunications, a long-distance call (U.S.) or trunk call is a telephone call made to a location outside a defined local calling area. Long-distance calls are typically charged a higher billing rate than local calls. The term is not necessarily synonymous with placing calls to another telephone area code.
Direct inward dialing (DID), also called direct dial-in (DDI) in Europe and Oceania, is a telecommunication service offered by telephone companies to subscribers who operate a private branch exchange (PBX) system. The feature provides service for multiple telephone numbers over one or more analog or digital physical circuits to the PBX, and transmits the dialed telephone number to the PBX so that a PBX extension is directly accessible for an outside caller, possibly by-passing an auto-attendant.
Virtual queue is a concept used in both inbound call centers and other businesses to improve wait times for users. Call centers use an Automatic Call Distributor (ACD) to distribute incoming calls to specific resources (agents) in the center. ACDs hold queued calls in First In, First Out order until agents become available. Virtual queue systems allow callers to receive callbacks instead of waiting in an ACD queue.
Foreign exchange service (FX) is an access service in a telecommunications network in which a telephone in a given exchange area is connected, via a private line, as opposed to a switched line, to a telephone exchange or central office in another exchange area, called the foreign exchange, rather than the local exchange area where the subscriber station equipment is located.
Traffic pumping, also known as access stimulation, is a controversial practice by which some local exchange telephone carriers in rural areas of the United States inflate the volume of incoming calls to their networks, and profit from the greatly increased intercarrier compensation fees to which they are entitled by the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
Toll-free telephone numbers in the North American Numbering Plan have the area code prefix 800, 833, 844, 855, 866, 877, and 888. Additionally, area codes 822, 880 through 887, and 889 are reserved for toll-free use in the future. 811 is excluded because it is a special dialing code in the group NXX for various other purposes.
A virtual number, also known as direct inward dialing (DID) or access numbers, is a telephone number without a directly associated telephone line. Usually, these numbers are programmed to forward incoming calls to one of the pre-set telephone numbers, chosen by the client: fixed, mobile or VoIP. A virtual number can work like a gateway between traditional calls (PSTN) and VoIP.
Operator Messaging is the term, similar to Text Messaging and Voice Messaging, applying to an answering service call center who focuses on one specific scripting style that has grown out of the alphanumeric pager history.
Voice-based marketing automation (VBMA) refers to software platforms designed for marketing, sales, and support departments to measure, manage, and automate their phone conversations. Marketing departments, sales teams, and support agents use VBMA to initiate, manage, monitor, track, route, record, and report on sales and support phone conversations.