My Thoughts on Technology and Jamaica: How to enable Calling Features and Codes on your Homephone Landline in Jamaica

Of late, Landline, also called POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) has slowly been making a comeback.

The nostalgia of having a phone at home was captured in the Homefone (spelt “Home Phone” officially!) , which began to skyrocket in popularity after they had dropped the calling rate for landline to mobile rate to $3.09 per minute, billed per second as noted in the article “LIME cuts landline to mobile rate”, published Thursday, July 04, 2013, The Jamaica Observer.

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This was around the same time that LIME, the former incarnation of FLOW, has dropped their JA$2.99 Talkez plan as noted in my blog article entitled “LIME drops JA$2.99 Talk EZ to All Networks as Digicel promises something Bigger”, marking a revival for the struggling telecom provider.

There are now three (3) Home Phone plans:

1. Home Phone Basic

2. Home Phone Essential

3. Home Phone Plus

The details for them are as listed below:

Package	Monthly Price	Details
Home Phone Basic	$1,200	Includes 100 free minutes of talk time per month to call any local landline. Includes FREE Call Waiting, Call Forwarding, 3-Way Calling, Automatic Busy Redial, Caller Id, Priority Ring, Selective Call Rejection
Home Phone Essential	$1,500	500 free minutes of talk time per month to call any local landline number. Includes FREE Call Waiting, Call Forwarding, 3-Way Calling, Automatic Busy Redial, Caller Id, Priority Ring, Selective Call Rejection
Home Phone Plus	$1,800	1000 free minutes to call any local mobile and landline numbers. Includes FREE Call Waiting, Call Forwarding, 3-Way Calling, Automatic Busy Redial, Caller Id, Priority Ring, Selective Call Rejection

As for the Calling rates, that has improved dramatically, dropping as low as JA$0.99 per minute on per second billing.

Destination	Rate per minute (excludes GCT)
Local Rates
FLOW Home Phone (formerly Columbus Communications' Flow)	$0.99
FLOW Home Phone (formerly LIME)	$0.99
FLOW Home Phone (NEW)	$0.99
Digicel Fixed Line	$2.40
Other Local Operators (OLO) Fixed Line	$2.40
FLOW (formerly LIME) Mobile	$2.85
Digicel Mobile	$2.85
Other Local Operators (OLO) Mobile	$2.85
International Rates
USA, Canada and UK (landline)	$10.00
Caribbean	$25/$35

They've now recovered with their mobile service having grown to 1 million customers to the point of their entire Network, Mobile, Fixed line and Broadband Network, going down between Friday September 2nd and Saturday September 3rd 2016 as noted in my Geezam blog article entitled “FLOW Jamaica Network Outage due to 1 Million Satisfied Customers”.

This is a strong sign they are getting a lot of customer who are seeking to save money on their mobile and landline calling, as Digicel still isn't price competitive despite offering more advance products such as Digicel LTE and Digicel Play as noted in my Geezam blog article entitled “How to Activate a Digicel LTE Smart Plan on your Smartphone”.

So it’s worth your while to re-learn the various tricks that your landline that puts your POTS on par with a modern Google Android phone as listed below.

Voicemail	If you miss a call, callers can choose to leave a voice message.
Check voicemail	Retrieve your voice messages.	Dial *91
Call Waiting	If someone calls while you're on the phone, you can put the first call on hold while you take the second.
Create a distinct alert	Use a distinct sound to notify you of calls from a specific number.	Dial *32
Delete a distinct alert	Delete a distinct sound to notify you of calls from a specific number.	Dial *33
Cancel Call waiting	Cancel your Call Waiting if you want an uninterrupted call.	Dial *70
Automatic Calling Features	Dial a short code instead of dialling a full number.
Recall	Redial the number of the last incoming call.	Dial *69
Callback	Redial the number of the last outgoing call.	Dial *66
Wakeup Call Feature	Turn your phone into an alarm clock by programming it to ring at a certain time.
Activate Wakeup Call	Turn on the Wakeup Call feature.
Cancel Wakeup Call	Turn off the Wakeup Call feature.	Dial *100
Check Wakeup Call Status	Check to see if your Wakeup Call is activated or not.	Dial *101
Call Forwarding	Have your calls forwarded to another mobile, landline or Flow phone.
Enable Call Forwarding	Turn on the Call Forwarding feature.	Dial*72
Disable Call Forwarding	Turn off the Call Forwarding feature.	Dial*73
Enable busy line Call Forwarding	Turn on the Call Forwarding feature for when your line is busy.	Dial*90
Change busy line Call Forwarding	Change the number your calls get forwarded number to when your line is busy.	Dial*40
Enable no-answer Call Forwarding	Turn on the Call Forwarding feature for when calls to your line go unanswered.	Dial*92
Change no-answer Call Forwarding	Change the number your calls get forwarded number to when calls to your line go unanswered.	Dial*41
Disable no-answer Call Forwarding	Turn off the Call Forwarding feature for when calls to your line go unanswered.	Dial*93
Enable specific number	Call Turn on the Call Forwarding feature from a Forwarding specific number to another mobile, landline or Flow phone.	Dial*36
Disable specific number	Call Turn off the Call Forwarding feature from a specific Forwarding number to another mobile, landline or Flow phone.	Dial*37