*73 — how to cancel call forwarding

1. Pick up the phone whose forwarding you want to cancel — must be the line forwarding is set on.
2. Dial *73.
3. Press send.
4. Wait for the confirmation tone (a stutter dial tone or three short beeps).
5. Hang up.

From that point, inbound calls ring your phone normally again. Test by calling the line from a different phone — if it rings your phone instead of the old destination, cancel worked.

*73 clears whichever forwarding is currently routing. On most carriers, both *72 and *71 can be set independently, but *73 is a single cancel that turns off the active one. If you've ever toggled both on, run *73 twice in separate sessions to be sure.

A few carriers (some VoIP plans, Fios on legacy hardware) keep forwarding rules pinned in the web portal — if *73 doesn't take, log in and disable forwarding from the calling-features page.

If your phone is on AT&T wireless, T-Mobile, Rogers, Freedom Mobile, or another GSM carrier, *73 doesn't apply. Use these instead:

• `##21#` — cancels unconditional forwarding (the **21* rule).
• `##61#` — cancels conditional forwarding (the **61* rule).
• `##002#` — nuclear option, cancels all forwarding rules at once.

Dial the code and press the call/send button (not just enter). You'll get a confirmation text within about a minute. If you don't, the code may have been treated as a regular call — re-check the leading ## and trailing #.

Three usual suspects: (1) you're dialing from a different line than the one being forwarded — star codes only affect the line they're dialed from; (2) your carrier or plan has star codes disabled — check the web portal under Calling Features → Call Forwarding; (3) you're on a GSM wireless carrier and need ##21# or ##61# instead.

A fourth, less common: forwarding was set from the web portal, not via star code. Some carriers won't let a star-code cancel override a portal-set forwarding rule. Cancel from the same place it was set.