BellSouth is adding Simultaneous Ring service to its Centrex offering, giving traditional voice customers a chance to use a service most associated with voice over IP.

The new offering, to be rolled out in phases through 2005 and part of 2006, will simultaneously deliver an incoming call to five different phones, including one wireless phone, enabling a mobile worker to get work calls while traveling or at a remote office.

The service is the first wireline-wireless integration feature to be offered through BellSouth Centrex, said Vicki Donaldson, product manager.

"This is an optional feature for customers who are highly mobile," she said. It can be purchased and paid for on a station-by-station basis, so "those who demand accessibility can purchase it for their employees who require it as opposed to those who don't."

BellSouth began upgrading its switches to offer the service at the first of the year, beginning with its Nortel Networks central office switches. It has two other switch vendors--Lucent Technologies and Siemens--and is negotiating with those two vendors to make the same changes, Donaldson said.

In addition to supporting mobile workers, the Simultaneous Ring service has immediate appeal for universities and their students, and for businesses who want to keep telephone service working in security or other crisis situations.

"This will let students be more linked to their dormitories," she said. "Typically, the students bring their cellular phones to school and now they can link that to their dormitory service."

Similarly, businesses facing evacuation can remotely activate the feature so that business calls can be immediately diverted to a new location.