Landline call forwarding: forward your home or office line to a cell

On most North American landlines:

*72 and *73 are close to universal. The conditional codes are the ones that differ — some providers use *71 for busy-or-no-answer, others split it into *90 and *92, and a few don't offer conditional forwarding on residential lines at all. If a code doesn't take, that's usually why.

More on the difference between the two modes: conditional call forwarding.

1. Pick up the handset on the landline you want to forward and wait for a dial tone.
2. Dial *72.
3. When you hear a second dial tone or a stutter tone, dial the destination number in full — 10 digits, no spaces or dashes. For example: *728005551234.
4. Wait. On most networks the forwarded number rings once, or you hear a confirmation tone.
5. Hang up.

To confirm it worked, call the landline from another phone. It should ring at the destination without ringing the landline at all.

To turn it off, pick up the same landline, dial *73, and wait for the confirmation tone.

• CenturyLink / Lumen — standard *72 / *73 on copper lines. Some plans need call forwarding added to the account before the code will register.
• AT&T landline — *72 / *73 on traditional POTS lines. AT&T *wireless* is different and uses USSD codes instead: see how to forward calls on AT&T.
• Frontier — *72 / *73, with *90 and *92 for busy and no-answer forwarding on most plans.
• Verizon Fios Digital Voice — supports the star codes, and also has forwarding under Calling Features in the My Verizon portal. Details on how to forward calls on Verizon.
• Xfinity Voice — usually managed in the Xfinity app or web portal rather than by dial code. Step-by-step on Comcast Xfinity call forwarding.
• Spectrum Voice — same pattern, managed in the Spectrum portal. See Spectrum call forwarding.

If you're not sure which type of line you have: if the phone stops working when your internet goes down, it's VoIP, and the portal is the reliable route.

Two charges catch people out:

The forwarded leg is billed as a call from your landline. When someone calls your office and the network sends it to your mobile, that second leg is an outbound call from the landline to the cell number, billed at your plan's normal rate. If the destination is long distance, every forwarded call is a long-distance call — a real cost on a busy business line.

The line stays occupied while forwarding. On a single-line copper connection, a forwarded call ties up the line. A second caller gets a busy signal unless you also have call waiting or a hunt group. What is call waiting covers that interaction.

Both are avoidable by forwarding to a local number, or to a service that answers rather than relaying.

Forwarding a business landline to a cell solves one problem — calls reaching you — and creates three:

• Your mobile now rings with unscreened business calls at every hour, and the caller ID shows the *caller's* number, so you can't tell a customer from a personal call before you pick up.
• If you're already on a call or can't answer, it lands in your personal voicemail, which usually isn't set up for the business.
• Only one person can receive a forwarded line. There's no queue and no overflow.

The alternative is to forward the landline to something that reliably answers instead of just relaying. That's what an after-hours answering service does — the line is forwarded once and every call gets picked up, screened, and either booked or passed on.