Call forwarding star codes explained

A star code is a short instruction you dial to your own carrier, not a number you call. *72 usually turns call forwarding on and *73 usually turns it off. Usually is the operative word: the codes are assigned centrally, but nothing guarantees a given code means the same thing on every network.

When you dial *72 and a number, no call is placed. The digits reach the first switch that handles your line, which recognises the pattern as a request rather than a destination, sets a flag against your line, and plays you a confirmation tone. The number you typed is stored, not dialled.

That is why the effect survives the phone being switched off, why it applies to the line rather than to the handset, and why turning it off needs its own code. Nothing on your phone is remembering anything.

The formal name is a vertical service code. NANPA, the North American Numbering Plan Administrator, publishes the assignments and describes the format as *XX or *2XX on a touchtone phone, with 11XX and 112XX as the rotary equivalents that a few switches still honour.

The codes are assigned by NANPA under guidelines developed by the Industry Numbering Committee, which is sponsored by ATIS. There is a real list, kept by a real administrator, and it is not folklore.

It is also not a rule. The administrator's own page carries this warning, and it is the single most useful sentence anybody has written about star codes:

Assignment of a VSC by NANPA for a particular service or feature should not be considered assurance that the assigned code can be used without conflict anywhere in the North American Numbering Plan area.

That is an administrator saying, in its own words, that the list coordinates rather than compels. The same page notes there is already some inconsistency in how codes are used for specific features.

Three things make the drift worse in practice. Wireless carriers layer their own codes on top. Cable and internet phone providers implement a subset and rename the rest. And any phone system between you and the outside world can intercept a code before the carrier ever sees it, which is why a code that works from a cell phone can do nothing from the desk phone next to it.

Six of them, verbatim from the assignment list:

The pattern is worth noticing because it makes the list easier to hold: the deactivation code is generally the activation code with the first digit raised by one, so 72 and 73 pair, 68 and 88 pair, 63 and 83 pair.

The distinction between the first pair and the second is the difference between forwarding everything and forwarding only when you are busy or absent, which is a bigger decision than the two digits suggest: the four types of call forwarding.

*67 turns up in every star-code list and it has nothing to do with forwarding. NANPA assigns it as Calling Number Delivery Blocking: it hides your number on the next call you place. Its neighbours on the list are the same shape:

• *65 and *85, Calling Number Delivery activation and deactivation
• *77 and *87, Anonymous Call Rejection
• *69, Automatic Recall
• *57, Customer Originated Trace

The only thing these share with the forwarding codes is the dialling pattern. They are on one list because they are all instructions to the switch rather than destinations, which is the definition of a vertical service code and the reason the category exists at all.

Ask the carrier that sends you the bill, then test it. Not the carrier your friend has, and not the list at the top of a search result, which is describing a network that is probably not yours.

The test takes five minutes and answers questions no list can:

1. Dial the activation code with a colleague's number and listen for the confirmation.
2. Call your line from a third phone and see where it lands.
3. Dial the deactivation code, call again, and confirm it stopped.
4. Note what the destination phone displayed, because that varies too.

If step three does nothing, you have found the most common star-code problem there is: forwarding that was set from a different device or a different portal, and does not answer to the code you are dialling.

Star codes are a per-line control, and their limitation is the limitation of the line: one destination, no idea what time it is, no way to offer a caller a choice, no record of what happened.

Ringfully does not use star codes for any of this, and there is nothing on your line to dial. What happens to a call is a flow you drew: a Business hours block decides whether you are open, a Collect digits / Menu block offers the caller a choice if you want one, Transfer to queue offers the call to the people who should take it, and Voicemail catches the rest. You change it by editing the flow and pressing publish rather than by dialling a code and hoping. That mechanism is written up in change your auto attendant menu yourself.

For what the redirect actually does to a call once a code has switched it on, see how call forwarding actually works. The rest of the subject lives under call control. If you are dialling codes today and cannot tell what state your line is in, tell us what it does.

The code table above is quoted from NANPA's published assignments and is not a claim about any particular network. Codes on wireless, cable and hosted services differ, and your carrier is the authority for your own line.