My wife and I moved out of NYC 10 years ago, but we still have the same NYC cell phone numbers, despite the fact that we now live in Oregon.
Yesterday, a friend tried multiple times to call us, to no avail–the calls went straight to a busy signal. The friend, located here in Oregon, is in a similar situation: She has a Colorado phone number, despite having moved several years ago.
Once she met up with us, she tried to call again (while we were in the same room), and it still went straight to busy. I was able to call her, however.
Could this all have something to do with Sandy-related outages in the NYC area? Do calls to and from my number still have to be routed through some NYC telephone exchange, then be sent back across the country? Or is there something wrong with my friend’s phone/calling plan?
My wife and I both have iPhones on Verizon. Friend has an iPhone on AT&T.
Yes; calls to her went through fine. Call from my house line to our phones go through fine, too. Which makes me suspect it was her phone … but it could also be an AT&T-Verizon issue, or a temporary outage.
Yes, calls to your phone will get routed to New York and then trunked back to wherever you are.
You and your friend are using different long distance carriers and the carrier that your friend’s phone uses may have trouble getting through to New York because of damage or overload resulting from Sandy.
Just for yucks, from your landline phone dial your cell phone number with 10-10-345 in front of the number. For example, if your cell phone is 1-212-555-1212, dial
10-10-345-1-212-555-1212. This will route your call over the AT&T network. Just hang up as soon as you get ringing or busy (don’t answer and don’t wait long enough to go to voicemail) and you won’t get charged.
(10-10-345 is an AT&T service which they market under the name “Lucky Dog Phone Company.” Lucky Dog is not a real phone company, it is just a billing/marketing gimmick by AT&T that they set up a long time ago when the dial-around rate wars were going on. It still works. The interstate rate is 7 cents per minute plus 59 cents per call plus tax.)
I don’t know if this is related, but it could be. I live in Oregon and have at&t. On Tuesday, the network was down most of the day. Finally in the evening I got bars, but had to reboot my phone to get back on the network. The only way I could figure out to do that was to pop the battery for a few seconds.
I suspect this may have been caused by the hurricane, even though I have an Oregon number.