Extension to Cellular

General Information

Extension to Cellular, or EC500 for short, is an optional voice service that connects your university landline telephone with your cell phone. Whenever someone calls your university phone, the call rings almost simultaneously on your cell phone. This is ideal for people who want, or need, to be both highly-available and highly-mobile. For those times when you prefer to be less available, you can turn the service on and off at-will.

If you already have a campus phone and a cell phone, EC500 can help you manage your calls and get you calls faster. If you receive many calls, but need to be away from your campus phone frequently throughout the day, you may miss fewer calls with EC500. You can even answer a call on your cell and then continue the call from your desk, without having to transfer the caller or call them back when you have your hands-free.

• EC500 works with both analog and digital phones.
  
  
• EC500 works with Cornell and non-Cornell equipment. Your landline must be a "campus" phone with service provided by CIT/NCS.
  
  
• EC500 works with any cell phone (with a ten-digit number: area code + exchange + extension). To avoid additional charges beyond the monthly fee, your cell phone number must be a local call from campus.

For customers who enable EC500 for a cell phone that is not part of the local calling region, toll charges will be incurred every time the cell phone is used to answer a call. (In effect, the desk phone will be placing a long distance call to the cell phone.) Those toll charges will be billed against the customer's desk phone.

• This technology can only bridge one campus phone to one cell phone.

• You cannot have two different campus phone numbers bridged to the same cell phone.
• You cannot have one campus phone bridged to two different cell phone numbers.

• You can turn this feature on and off from any phone (your campus phone, your cell phone, or remotely from any phone) using a security code (4 to 8 digits, user-selectable).

Main Topics

• User Instructions

• Signing Up & Billing

• AUDIX & Voice Mail

• CallerID

• Getting Help

• Frequently Asked Questions

Extension to Cellular
Home Page

Some details about where calls go and how they behave and what happens next.

(You'll find even more detail on our FAQ page.)

• Calls placed to your campus phone make both your campus phone and cell phone ring.

• If you answer your campus phone, the "bridge" to your cell phone is dropped, and everything continues just like a normal call.
• If you answer your cell phone, the bridge to your campus phone is maintained, and you can pick up the call on your campus phone at any point in the conversation (just like you could pick up the extension in your kitchen after answering on the extension in your bedroom). This can be useful if you take a call while walking across campus and get back to your office while you're still talking.
• If you are talking on your cell phone when a call comes in, your cell phone will do whatever it does when you're talking and a call comes in, whether that's alerting you with a call-waiting signal, going to voice mail, or giving the caller a busy signal.
• If you are already talking on your campus phone when a call comes in, your campus phone will do whatever it does when you're talking and a call comes in, whether that's ringing (as with most digital phones), alerting you with a call-waiting signal, going to voice mail, or giving the caller a busy signal.

• Sometimes you won't answer a call. If you don't answer (remember that both your campus phone and cell phone are ringing), the call will be handled by whichever voice mail / answering machine / rollover option gets there first. Some examples:

• If AUDIX is set to answer after 4 rings, and your cell phone voice mail is set to answer after 6 rings, AUDIX will take the call after 4 rings and the bridge to your cell phone is dropped.
• If you have your campus phone set with a coverage path (an option that transfers calls to another extension if you don't answer), the bridge to your cell phone is dropped when the call is transferred. (But if your cell phone voice mail is quicker to pick up than your coverage path, the voice mail wins; see the previous bullet).
• If you have "after-hours" programming or Send All Calls active, that feature takes effect as a call comes in, so your cell phone will not ring at all.
• This one is really pretty important...

If your cell phone is unavailable (because it's turned off, or out of range, or out of power), your cell phone's voice mail will probably take the call right away without ringing on your campus phone. For this reason we strongly recommend (hint hint) that you turn the EC500 feature off if you know your cell phone will not be available. And we're happy to tell you that you can turn EC500 on or off from any phone

• Calls placed to your cell phone behave the way they always have. Nothing new here...