Saturday, May 13, 2006
Changing The Ring Time On T-Mobile US Before VoiceMail Kicks In
Posted by Ed Hansberry in "THOUGHT" @ 11:00 AM
Just a random thought here that may help a few members out. If you have T-Mobile USA, you can program the time your phone rings before it rolls to voice mail, but it isn't at all intuitive. This applies to Pocket PC Phones, Smartphones, or even plain vanilla free phones from T-Mobile on their network. I've never seen a phone with this option on the menu. The first thing you should do is see see what your ring time is now. Do do this, dial *#61*11#[SEND] and you should eventually get some text back that looks like the following screenshot.
On a T-Mobile SDA Smartphone, it is a full screen message, but the text is the same, it lists the phone number for voice mail then some time in seconds. Notice that when the voice mail kicks in, it is forwarding to the voice mail number. Interesting. I suppose if you had another desired voice mail system outside of T-Mobile you wished to use, you could set it to that, as we'll see below.
Ok, now that you know what your time is, you can raise or lower it. My understanding is it has to be 5-30 seconds in increments of 5. To set it, use the following command: **61*18056377243*11*nn#[SEND]. Replace the nn command section with your desired time. I have mine set to 30. That phone number is the T-Mobile voice mail system. This is where you could play with an external phone number if desired. I have not tried that so play with a different system at your own risk. Worst case scenario you'd have to call T-Mobile to help clean up any mess you make because this isn't stored on your phone, it is stored on their server, so I advise extreme caution. Setting the time, however, is a relatively simple process. Just make sure you have all of the asterisks and hash symbols right. Since it is on the server, it applies to all phones you stick your SIM in. I set my time back when I used my Nokia 3650 and the setting has persisted with a PDA2K, JasJar and K-Jam.
On a T-Mobile SDA Smartphone, it is a full screen message, but the text is the same, it lists the phone number for voice mail then some time in seconds. Notice that when the voice mail kicks in, it is forwarding to the voice mail number. Interesting. I suppose if you had another desired voice mail system outside of T-Mobile you wished to use, you could set it to that, as we'll see below.
Ok, now that you know what your time is, you can raise or lower it. My understanding is it has to be 5-30 seconds in increments of 5. To set it, use the following command: **61*18056377243*11*nn#[SEND]. Replace the nn command section with your desired time. I have mine set to 30. That phone number is the T-Mobile voice mail system. This is where you could play with an external phone number if desired. I have not tried that so play with a different system at your own risk. Worst case scenario you'd have to call T-Mobile to help clean up any mess you make because this isn't stored on your phone, it is stored on their server, so I advise extreme caution. Setting the time, however, is a relatively simple process. Just make sure you have all of the asterisks and hash symbols right. Since it is on the server, it applies to all phones you stick your SIM in. I set my time back when I used my Nokia 3650 and the setting has persisted with a PDA2K, JasJar and K-Jam.
