Fongo Community Forums

The Number of rings to voicemail is restricted to 5, less than the follow-me setting (1~8). If people set 5~8 in follow-me, it will not happen because it goes to voicemail.

In most cases 5 rings is not sufficient for home phone, especially for larger house.

I suggest to allow 1~8 for voicemail, to match the follow-me setting. Or allow user to turn off voicemail. Thanks.

the settings on follow me are set up so that if you forward to your cell phone because you are out of town, and you want to receive the message on your cell (or any other number) it will give a chance for that number to take it.

jchen wrote:The Number of rings to voicemail is restricted to 5, less than the follow-me setting (1~8). If people set 5~8 in follow-me, it will not happen because it goes to voicemail.

In most cases 5 rings is not sufficient for home phone, especially for larger house.

I suggest to allow 1~8 for voicemail, to match the follow-me setting. Or allow user to turn off voicemail. Thanks.

I would agree that there needs to be a selection > 5 rings (preferably 8) before voicemail kicks in to answer.

FONGO_mike wrote:the settings on follow me are set up so that if you forward to your cell phone because you are out of town, and you want to receive the message on your cell (or any other number) it will give a chance for that number to take it.

If people set the follow-me to 5~8 rings, the forward will never be happened, because it will be overridded by the voice mail 5 rings. The call goes to VM instead of forwarding.

On the other hand, usually voip call connectiong is slower than PSTN, it may take the time of a ring (4~6 seconds) to start ring the destination phone after the caller finishes sending all digits. When the call goes to VM, the caller hears 5 ringback tones, but the destination phone may actually play 4 rings only (because the time of 1st ringback tone is consumed by the connection). 4 rings is really too less for most people.

Changing VM to 1~8 rings will improve Fongo's user experience and won't cost any. Why not?

Another solution is to give user the option to turn off voice mail. This is give user more fexibilities.

I think currently the default 5 rings to VM is perfect. Personally I don't think Freephonline & Fongo need to improve this ring feature setting as 5 rings (current default) gives us plenty and enough time to answer our phone.

Funkytown wrote:I think currently the default 5 rings to VM is perfect. Personally I don't think Freephonline & Fongo need to improve this ring feature setting as 5 rings (current default) gives us plenty and enough time to answer our phone.

The option for number of ring is not only for leaving more time to people to pick up the call, but also for avoiding a runtime issue in call forwarding.

In user account, the call forwarding setting is 1~8 rings. User may select "sequential" with ring number equal to or greater to 5, Let's say 6 ring. User may think the call will be forwarded to his mobile number or another phone when there's no answer after 6 rings. However it will never happened because all call go to VM by the 5 rings. User may not be aware of losing all calls!

I believe jchen is expecting the phone to ring a number of times before the call is forwarded.

Unfortunately, an incoming call is terminated by either 1) call forwarding or 2) answering the phone (failing to answer goes to voicemail). Choose one or the other...it can not be both.

If call forwarding is chosen, your FPL voicemail will not activate assuming your forward-to number will pick up the call.

If call forwarding is disabled, then voicemail will kick in after the number of rings specified. Note that you can still pick up/answer the phone even if it had stopped ringing provided the caller is still on the line leaving a message...and that is pretty plenty of time. Now if the caller does not leave a message, then obviously the call was not important at all.

I am not sure if this is true across all platforms but I am sure it behaves that way with the SIP (unlocked/paid) FPL.

@jchen
I have an unlocked FPL and this is what I tested today. Note that this was just to test the features (hence may not be conclusive) as I use a different setup to handle my incoming calls.

In my online account:
-Set Rings before voicemail to 5 (max).
-Set Follow-me options to:
Status: Enable
Ring Mode: Sequential
Follow-me Mode: Call Forward when unavailable.
Follow-me number: my cellphone number
Number of rings (to try calling follow-me number): 12 (max)

Now, when my FPL number is called and is not answered, the caller will be forwarded to my cellphone. However, the first ring on my cellphone corresponds to the eighth ring from the callers side and that gives me 5 rings on my cellphone to pick up the forwarded call, assuming the caller does not hang up. Bear in mind that the reason why the default ring of 4 was established was that studies in the previous century (yes, I have lived long enough ) were conducted and about 80% of callers hang up if call is not answered between the third and the fourth call. Now in this millenium, this might have changed and Fongo needs to adapt.

Therefore, on the FPL platform, I do not see a need to increase the current 5 rings since any increase will eat up the number of rings available to the phone that is forwarded to (my cellphone in this case).

I hope that made sense. BTW, I agree to the above posts suggesting that a setting of 5 rings allows plenty of time to reach the phone, unless of course you only have one handset for every floor level that spans more than a thousand square feet.