Call diversion for mobile phones

With most mobile phone networks and contracts (except PAYG ones) you can divert incoming calls to another number.

This is a very useful feature, and allows you to send calls to your mobile phone's voicemail (answerphone) or to another number, or to a message handling service.

What does it cost?

The basic principle is that the caller pays for a call to the number they dialled, and if you choose to divert or forward it on to another destination, you do that at your expense.

Except...

Most networks allow you to divert to your mobile's answerphone service for free (though you may pay to retrieve the messages). See the Answerphone pages for more information.

Except...

Orange offered the exceptionally useful EveryPhone service, which allowed you to remotely divert calls for your Orange phone to any UK fixed line number or any other Orange phone number without paying any diverted call charges. For details of this, see the EveryPhone page, but Orange are in the process of killing it off..

Types of divert

There are different situations and types of call that can be diverted. You can set diverts for each separately if you prefer.

• Unconditional All incoming calls go to the destination you specify, regardless of what your handset is doing at the time.
• Not available If your phone is switched off or out of coverage
• Busy (engaged) If your phone is in a call. Note that even if Call Waiting is active, when a call is being connected, or when your phone is ringing, call waiting won't work, and your phone will be "busy".
• Not answered If you do not answer your phone within a specified time, the not answered divert will cut in. You can normally change the delay before this happens, up to a maximum of 30 seconds.

Types of call

You can choose to divert calls to fax, data, voice and line two (only available on Orange in the UK) numbers in a different way. You can't divert incoming SMS text messages at all, unfortunately.

For example, you may choose to have all incoming faxes diverted to your office fax machine, or to a fax mailbox (see the Fax and Data page for more details), line 2 calls to an office answerphone, and have normal voice calls go to your mobile.

Setting and changing diverts

Most models of mobile phone give menu commands that allow you to set up, query and cancel diverts. These may not allow you to set all the types of diverts available, and you can't store them in memory, ready for re-use.

You may find it easier and quicker to use the standard GSM codes to set up and amend diverts. For details, see the GSM Codes page. Not that these codes are mostly applicable to fixed line exchanges as well, so if you have call diversion enabled on a fixed line, you can use the codes to amend the settings.

Personal numbers

As an alternative to call diversion, you can have a "Personal number" which can be set to deliver calls to the number of your choice, or in some cases, can seek you out by trying a series of numbers till it finds you. These are available for free, but callers have to pay a higher call charge to ring these numbers, and the high charge of a personal number can put callers off!

Incoming diverted calls

If an incoming call is diverted, a mobile will normally tell you, either by briefly showing "Diverted Call" or similar, or by prefixing the caller's number with the > symbol. When calls are diverted, the number displayed is that of the original caller, not that of any intermediate step in the chain.

Roaming

When you are roaming on the network of another country, incoming calls are diverted to your phone wherever it is. The divert leg is charged to you at the international call rate that your home network charges to ring the place where you are roaming. In some cases, this can be amazingly expensive. You may prefer to bar incoming calls when roaming. See the Costs page of the Roaming section for more details.

Be particularly careful about conditional diverts when roaming: they can be very expensive indeed. Read the Roaming pages before going overseas.

See also [ Everyphone ] : [ GSM Codes ]

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