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What Does *18 (Star-1-8) Do?
The purpose of *18 (or *350) was to find
your cellular phone while roaming, so you
can access your voice mail by calling your
own number. This is "FMR", for
"Follow Me Roaming". In the 80's
and 90's, cellular switches weren't very
smart. If you called your own wireless number
while roaming, the system would find you
and try to deliver the call. But you're on
the phone calling your own number, therefore
it would return a "busy" signal.
The called switch didn't know to tell the calling switch to return your call to voice mail.
So entering *19 before calling your own number,
turned off Follow Me Roaming, *18 turned
it back on.
Today's switches are smarter. But some carriers
still recognize *18 as a valid command, even
if it doesn't do anything. Some cellular
carriers still allow *19 to stop incoming calls while roaming, and need to
keep *18 active to undo it. Sometimes Customer
Service recommends you enter *18, in case
you accidentally pressed *19. *18 is valid
in "B" Channel Cellular carriers.
*350 is for "A" Channel carriers.
It was never used with PCS (1900 MHz) or
GSM carriers.
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