The Tenuous Link

Is it strange that my 3 year old mobile phone has far more functionality packed in to a far more usable package than the brand new phone tethered to the wall of my house? Or maybe that's not true. I just found out 2 interesting things from the BT web site*.

Caller ID is Free to BT Landlines Now

Caller ID now comes in 2 versions, free, or paid for. The service is the same whichever you choose, but only one version currently costs £1.75 a month. With Caller ID, a suitable telephone will be able to show you the telephone number of the person that is calling you. If your phone has an address book, and the caller is in the address book, then the phone will show you their name too. All very obvious, and how mobile phones have worked for centuries.

Phone 150 (or log on to BT.com) and ask for the "Privacy at Home" package, which includes Caller ID. They will also offer to register you with the Telephone Preference Service, which is a list of people who don't want to answer any more phone calls about double glazing. I joined, so I only get bugged by people calling from outside the UK now**.

SMS from Landline Phone Works Now

I have a landline phone with an SMS logo on it. But when I read the instruction book to find out how it works, I decided not to bother. The problems were because the service was from a 3rd party (Bizzyline): SMSs arrive on the recipients phone with the message centres phone number in the details, and not my phone number; SMSs to me had to be sent to the message centres phone number, and have my phone number #between hashes# in the message. Too broken.

Now BT are offering the BT Text service there is no need for anyone to mess with the phone numbers. Sending and receiving works just like from a mobile. But first you have to tell your telephone that you want to use the BT message centres. On my Panasonic DECT phone I had to go to the "Parameters" section of the SMS menu and make these changes:

	Old Number	New Number
Message Centre1	09110235029	1470P17094009
Message Centre2	0161274599	0800587529

More details on the BT website:
http://www.downloads.bt.com/callingfeatures/bt_text_settings.pdf
http://www2.bt.com/static/i/btretail/consumer/bttext/faq.html

BT have ended their free texting offer, but you can still get some free texts each month: http://www2.bt.com/static/i/btretail/consumer/bttextbundle/index.html

* I would have found out about the free Caller ID and (free) SMS service 6 months ago if I still got paper bills from BT, but they neglected to mention it in the e-bills that they send me.

** Mainly the unwanted phone calls I get are to ask me if I want cheaper phone calls. I explain to them that I pay £1.75 a month for something that is actually free, so I'm not likely to go for something that is merely cheaper. Don't tell BT though, they might start trying to take advantage of me.