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Cellphone pick-a-call

Pickup nearby phonecalls to landlines on your cell
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How many times have you been carrying a cell phone, and occupied in a meeting or other favorite activity, only to have your nearby landline ring?

Imagine how handy it would be to be able to answer the land line using your cellphone (no doubt at your side constantly, If you're like the rest of us!)

This could also work well to answer your home 'phone just as you are rushing out the driveway, or your office phone as you run around doing business.

I know the "pick-a-phone" function (answer a ringing phone from any other) exists on many PBX systems; this just extends the concept to include cellphone capability.

csea, Sep 22 2006

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       Good idea but there's no infrastructure to support this -- other than call forwarding, I suppose. However, "offices of the future" will probably just call your mobile in the first place.
theircompetitor, Sep 22 2006
  

       It would take some time to work out the bugs on a concept like that. It seems to me that someone would start "call snatching" like if you were in sales and a fellow rep heard your phone ringing he could discreetly take the call from you without ever knowing what happened.
Jscotty, Sep 22 2006
  

       [jscotty] I'm pretty sure such goings-on happen fairly frequently with today's PBX systems. The idea doesn't really introduce a new liability, just extends it to make it easier.   

       Presumably, the system could wait until a recognized cell- or land- phone attached, or timeout after 10 seconds or so, and allow the interloper to connect. Most of the behavior could be dictated by the user/subscriber.
csea, Sep 23 2006
  

       excellent idea!   

       and this could be done without changes in infrastructure (but with changes in phones of course)... basically using some kind of voice streaming between the phones using short-range radio (i'm thinking bluetooth.)   

       kinda like a mobile that doubles up as a bluetooth cordless handset.   

       Bun.
arvin, Sep 23 2006
  
      
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