My mom’s friend moved from NC to assisted living in SD to be near her daughter. She kept the same phone number and and NC area code yet it’s not a cell phone. Friend’s daughter even verified that to me in a PM. “Her phone number is still the same NCX-xxx-xxxx. It’s not technically a cell, but there’s no additional charge for long distance.”
What on earth kind of phone or service is this? I’d like to get it for my mom who has a landline.
It’s probably VOIP through Comcast or another internet provider.
thank you!
Depending on the landline carrier used, it may be possible to port the number from one state to another still as a landline. Ask your carrier about it. I ported a Verizon landline 20 miles from it’s original exchange without any trouble at all. I think there was a $5 fee for the service, but that was it. It can’t be much harder in these modern times to port all 10 digits.
More than likely voip, what they do is use wifi on a cell phone or other device to connect to the internet, then it is voip (voice over IP), which is basically how the phone service you get with cable packages works.
@happymomof1: I am not sure these days (my landline is fiber/digital, not copper cable), but back in the analog days you could only keep your old number if where you moved was in the same exchange/central office, your phone was tied to a switching office that generally had a limited range (my co was like 5 miles from my house, many were closer, I couldnt’ get DSL in the day because of that). These days with landlines using digital, they might be able to move a landline, since in a sense it is voip, too.
Yes, VOIP.
I ported my old house phone number to my condo via Magic Jack connected to my router.
@musicprnt - The landline was moved in 2011, within the same zip code, but far enough from the exchange to make it something that I hadn’t expected to be able to do. We went from Verizon digital to Verizon fiberoptic, and our rate went up a bit, but had no choice about that as the whole neighborhood was fiberoptic and the lower rate for copper wires was not available. If I recall correctly, the Verizon customer service agent indicated that this had to do with some kind of national (FCC???) ruling that required that numbers be able to be ported from one phone system to another.
Does it work when your wifi is down?
If the cable is working, but the wifi router is down and your phone doesn’t require the wifi router, the phone should still work as it would be running off the cable.
In my experience, it varies. We have AT&T cable, VOIP phone & internet. One, two [any combination], or all three can go down. Different tricks to try depending on which one[s] before calling customer service (always good to have a cell as backup), and it’s never taken more than an hour to have everything up and running again even if my saved hints don’t work.