I don’t think that is an option presently - having a land line and a cell phone with the same phone number. You might be able to forward your calls from your cell to your land line and perhaps depending on your landline service – visa versa. You can in theory have two cell phones with the same phone number but that requires physically transferring the SIM card (assuming you are using phones that still use SIM cards) from one phone to the other and shutting off the phone not in use and they would also have to be both be with the same carrier. I don’t think it is possible to have a land line and a cell phone with the same number operating simultaneously.
I do know that were I work, a manufacturing plant, we just started weekly rotations of being on call for our maintenance staff. And we got a new cell phone and new number especially for that purpose – that way if there was an plant emergency or a machine breakdown, there would only be one number to call rather than having to look up to see who was on call that week.
The problem with that is that this requires a physical hand off of that phone to the next person on call which depending on what normal shift and building they are assigned to and where they live, could mean passing it off at midnight on a Sunday or Saturday, not exactly practical especially since we have 3 plants, one several miles away from the other two. Our IT department was asked to find out if we could have a second cell phone with the same phone number and the answer from our provider was no – that’s not possible and I don’t think it had anything to do with 9-11 service. Last I heard the game plan was to have a primary cell phone and number to call and a secondary phone to which the prior person on call person would be responsible to set up to automatically forward their calls to the other phone and phone number once their rotation ended and that next person transferring calls back to the first phone once their rotation ended.
As far as dialing 9-11 from a cell phone, you can do that now, you just need to be sure first off to tell the operator you are calling from a cell phone and give your current location. Of course that might not help in a medical emergency or other type of emergency where you are able to dial 9-11 but not necessarily able to speak, but truthfully, how often does that happen?
There are improvements being made however to locate 9-11 calls from cell phones.
http://www.fcc.gov/guides/wireless-911-services
To be honest, I ditched my land line 10 years ago and I’ve had no problems or regrets over doing so. All I ever seemed to get on my land line were telemarketing calls (even being on the Do Not Call list, although it did cut it down) and wrong numbers. The only time in those 10 years that I dialed 9-11 was when I was on the road, rural road and witnessed a serious car accident and called from my cell phone.
And when I had a conventional land line cordless phone, when the power went off, so did my phone. And now when my power goes out, I lose my cable and my internet but my cell phone still works. Worse comes to worse, I can charge my phone in my car and even can charge from my laptop via a USB cable as long as my laptop still has battery life.
Many thanks for the detailed info..