telecom, Cheapest Incoming-Only Phone Service? (Westchester, NY)

I just moved to a building that requires a local phone number for the
door-intercom system to work. Everyone knows my old (cell) phone
number, and I have no reason to change it or stop using it, and I have
no need for any home telephone service other than my cell phone, but I
need a local number. So I'm wondering: what's the cheapest way to get
a local phone number which will forward to my cell?

Thanks.

-Joel

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Telcos which provide (Enterphone)
service or private contractors which provide (Interphone) service
usually generally have it rigged up so that door-to-apartment calls
*cannot* be forwarded off premises. You probably would not want to
have someone be able to remotely open your door when you were not
there; it is a security matter, that is why no forwarding is
available on Enter (Inter) phone service. If telco is supplying the
service, it works sort of like a gerry-rigged centrex. The lobby
phone gets dial tone from the central office and the caller dials
usually a two or three digit number associated with your name in
the lobby directory. You must tell your visitor your apartment number;
it is not obvious from the dialed code number. When you agree to
admit the caller and dial a '4' or '6' or whatever, the central
office pulses the front door latch to allow it to open so the caller
can hang up the phone and walk into the building. If you do not have
external phone service, then telco's contract with the building
management (which pays for the service) calls for telco to provide
you with a phone to operate the door only.

Now if your building has the service from a private contractor it
is called Interphone since the telco (at least years ago) had a patent
on 'Enterphone'. The private contractor usually has a 'computer like
box' in the basement or wherever telco enters the premises and the
'box' functions like a little switchboard sort of like telco and
all the house pairs terminate in this box with the outside trunk
lines coming in. It is quite transparent in that the 'box' just sits
there silently when you make an outgoing call; but when an incoming
call **from the front door** comes in the box does two things: it
tests your line for busy; if you are not talking it gives you a
distinctive ring (same as telco; to aid you in identifying the source
of the call) and if your line *is* busy it sends you a distinctive
call waiting tone (again, same as telco, even if you do not already
have call-waiting) so you can flash, the box puts your outside call
on hold and gives you the door call.

Like telco's (non-subscriber) service where any old phone can be
plugged into the place on the wall where the phone plugs in, **no
actual phone number is needed** since telco (or the private
contractor) provides battery as needed to operate the phone when it
gets called from the door. So if your building has one of those two
types of service (Enter/Interphone) don't bother with calling telco to
get phone service; just plug some cheap phone into the jack; it will
ring as needed and allow talking as needed for the front door intercom
function. When there is not someone at the door talking to you, the
phone will otherwise be dead. In any event (Enter or Inter) **call
forwarding will not work**. Contractor's box won't do it and telco
won't provide it, mainly for security reasons.

But there is a *third* type of front door service, always private
contractor. Sort of cheesy, IMO. In that system, front door person
dials your code (never actual apartment number) and the premises
'box' does a quick look up of your real seven-digit number then places
a phone call to that seven-digit number and bridges them together when
you answer (if you are home and do answer). Its sort of like a fancy
speed dial type thing. On that kind, you *can* do what you want and
have it call forwarded or run to an answering machine or wherever,
although IMO it is ill advised for security reasons. Do you want the
visitor to know you are not home because the door (speed dial type
phone) forwards to wherever? There is an exception to the **no for-
warding** rule: If you have a telco centrex type system (the first
one, above) fully connected and taking incoming/outgoing calls, etc
then TRUE incoming calls (not front door calls) can be call forwarded.
Turn call forwarding on as desired, but the front door will still
give its funny little ring-ring on the phone and not forward. I guess
that is because the programming decision whether or not to forward
is made at telco long before the decision as the origin of the call.

So find out from your new landlord **what kind** of front door
intercom service they have. If it is 'cheap' you want then you may
be able to get by just plugging a dead phone into a modular jack and
letting the front door do its own thing (types one and two above). If
you have to have an *actual phone number* (as in type three) then
bear in mind the front door will be as limited as the cheap phone
service is. If your line is busy (cheap phones do not get call
waiting) then the front door will get a busy signal also, and this
'cheap phone you never use since everyone has your cell phone' may
turn out to be sort of expensive as you install call waiting (to pamper
the front door) and call waiting to forward everyone else (but
hopefully not a bad guy burglar, etc) to your cell phone when you are
away from home. If you are dealing with type three above and
absolutely must get a working phone number from telco, then I would
say never give the number out to anyone (the people who matter would
have your cell phone anyway). Just let the phone sit there idly 99
percent of the time.

At this point you probably know more about Front Door Intercom Service
than most landlords and building managers. Oh, and regards repairs:
standard telco contracts on these devices call for a *thirty minute*
repair time turnaround if/when the front door intercom goes out of
order. Various reasons; all the pairs from central office to the
building and the jumpers, etc are *supposed to be dedicated and
plainly marked in the c.o.* and in the building basement, but it is
not uncommon to get a dorkus installer tech who rips off pairs in
older neighborhoods, nor is it uncommon for the cellanoids unlatching
the front door to go bad, and telco understands it is a rush/24 hour
per day repair job. Hopefully private contractors sense the urgency
also. If the landlord does not understand what kind of front door
intercom system he has, then try plugging in a dead phone to a jack
first and see if it works; if it does then all is cool. Some of them
say 'oh, you gotta have a phone to make the door work' and they don't
really know what they are saying. Then get back to us as needed. PAT]

r. Joel M. Hoffman wrote:







I am in the property management business, and in my experience the
most common type of these building entry systems are made by a company
called "doorking". The base models (they do make a "NO phone bill"
system which I do not discuss here) simply have 1 outgoing phone line.
These are "option 3" as you note above. There is a database of phone
numbers mapped to entry codes (or apartmenet numbers). When you enter
the code (or apt number) on the panel, all it does is call the number
that matches it it's database. No special contracts with the telco, no
special switching equipment on site. And the kicker is, if you know
the number of ther phone line it dials out from, you can call into it
and press whatever DTMF is assigned to open the door. (And also you
can program the database by dialing in, if you know the security code
assigned. 9999 is the default I think.) Lousy security, very low tech,
and, unfortunately, VERY common. And bottom line is you MUST have
telco service for it to work for your apartment.

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I know that at the time of divestiture,
telco was forbidden (under divestiture) to actively solicit new
subscribers to the Enterphone Front Door Security System, but all
existing customers were grandfathered, and there are still some of
those older (20 years) systems. Interphone is also a classy type of
system and not too many buildings can (or want to) afford them, so
regretfully, the 'option 3' systems are in use a lot. The Enterphone
set up from Illinois Bell used build in the wall style nice looking
stainless steel plates and armored handsets. Cheap they weren't, but
extremely good security. Mr. Weintz, are your tenants aware of just
how insecure, how woefully lacking in security their downstairs front
door is? And who comes around to maintain it as needed? PAT]

. Sean Weintz < XXXX@XXXXX.COM > wrote


My mother lived in a facility served by the cheapo system. It took
the place forever to add her name to the directory (handled by the
security dept at the main facility in another location). Until then I
would just wait until someone walked out and opened the door.

When she moved out, we waited for the movers. They called and
announced their arrival. We punched in the access code. They kept
calling back and said the door wouldn't unlock. Finally I went down
to get them. It turned out they were calling us on their cell phone,
not the entry phone on the wall.

The cheapo system is lousy when you call someone and they're on the
phone -- you get a busy signal. Lots of people do NOT have caller ID.

Apt. bldg. security isn't that good. As mentioned, in most you can
easily walk in when someone else leaves. (As we left the
aforementioned NYC bldg, some people came in doing just that, I hope
they weren't burglars.) I've dialed the wrong unit and got buzzed in
anyway.

My place has a private entrance and that's a good asset over a hallway
even when shared by only a few people.


Pat, thanks for the history of this fine Bell System product. I've
used it to get into nicer apt houses. My first exposure was back in
1968 in a NYC building, and the lobby unit had a Touch Tone pad which
was a novelty at the time. The residents dialed (rotary phone) a 4
for admission. It's quite a shame the companies were not allowed to
continue marketing it after divesture as it clearly offers superior
service to the other cheapo service more widely used.

I remember another large apt building with a 1960s Bell System auto
dialer. It was a small desktop unit, about 1" high with a window
showing a name and a red index ine, and about 5" wide and deep. To
use it, you pressed a key to start a motor that whirled the directory
and used the index line for the alpha letter desired. You then used a
manual wheel to select the exact name. You pressed a button and the
party was dialed. I wonder what dialer this was? (I've also seen
them at airport motel directory displays, which had ads for multiple
traveler services, and a similar unit to autodial the desired one.)
It seemed these dialers had a high capacity in a compact unit; I don't
know how they stored the number.

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Oh, there is no doubt, IMO, that the
*old* Bell System was a class act, with very good products. There were
'some problems' (to put it politely) with customer service but the
equipment and network was superb. The old, entirely central office-
based Enterphone service was a very good example. Older, more elegant
apartment buildings still using it (who would have gotten it installed
prior to 1983 or so, when the rules were changed) still have the
best system. In those days (pre-1983) Illinois Bell as one example,
charged *the building* fifty dollars per month for the system and
nothing to individual tenants who either had phones of their own or
not. Typically, an 'extension' of the door system also went to the
management office so the person in the office could also admit a
visitor to the building, and some long, obscure string of digits
on the lobby phone functioned like a 'ringback code' which would
click once or twice in the caller's ear then unlatch the door
automatically. I think it was called 'Fire Department Service' and
was intended to admit eme

. Sean Weintz wrote:


One of the things done under my watch (not my dept - I'm the IT guy,
but I like to think my input had something to do with it) was to rip
out the "option 3" type system and replace it with what Door King
calls their "no phone bill" system, basically a barebones PBX type
thing. There is a switch that sits between the pairs going up to each
apt and the telco demarc -- all calls from the front panel are handled
via that switch. If the tenant has phone service, the switch passes
the regular pots line thru when no call is coming for that apartment
from the panel. The switch has a call waiting type feature built in,
so that if a call comes from the panel and there is already a call in
progress on the pots lines, the tenant hears a call waiting tone and
can asnwer the panel, even if they do not subscribe to call waiting
from the local telco.

STILL not the system I'd have chosen, but it was a big improvement,
especially since in some of our buildings as many as 30% of the
tenants had no phone service. And an "option 3" type system won't work
for those tenants.

We also used to have issues with tenants getting their phone service
cut off and not telling us -- not THAT big a deal, until the telco
re-assigns the number to someone else (they seem to re-assign numbers
after only about three months or so here) -- One time this happened,
we didn't know about it, the number was still in the database of the
panel. People would go to visit that tenant at some pretty odd hours
(ie: 3:00am - I think the tenant was likely a drug dealer), press the
number on the panel, and some poor sod on the other end who just
happens to have a new phone number gets woken up. That person who had
been re-assigned the number finally filed a complaint with the police,
who contacted us (because the calls of course were coming from our
phone line). HOWEVER the police refused to tell us the phone number of
the person complaining, so there was no way to know what number needed
to be deleted from the database. 250 tenants in the building and we
were supposed to figure out magically which one had had their service
cut and never bothered to tell us about it. Positively SCARY.


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Congratulations on your upgrade to what
is essentially Interphone service. Since you did not have Enterphone
(telco-style front door service) prior to 1983 you can't have it now.
Telco not permitted to be in that business any longer, but they do
have grandfathered customers around from more than twenty years ago.
(although I do not know why in one sense: Ameritech had (and still
has) a Security Alarm business as a separate subsidiary which guards
stores, etc via customer premise equipment. It is still around today,
even though the phone side has gone to SBC. I think it has something
to do with rules against subsidiary companies having access to central
office equipment, which is a no-no, since there could be 'unfair
competition' as a result. But Interphone, originally a Canadian
company (or whoever owns the name 'Interphone') does these things the
way they should be done, which is via the **house pairs** to each
apartment with no regard to the phone numbers. Up until 1983 or so,
when apartment buildings went with the 'competitor' Interphone instead
of telco's Enterphone Service, they naturally had to get an okay from
telco for bridging into the house pairs, which according to the law
in those day