There will be a number of features that would be installed into the phone network. All of these features will be included no matter the technology used to deliver the service. Some features will not support rotary dial phones. For best results, one should strive for Cellular and SIP as soon as possible.
All of these features will be available to both cellular, and SIP customers (unless otherwise noted). When a feature can be managed through the online portal, it can also be managed through an app that can be installed on Android, iOS, or Kal-OS devices. The feaatures are as follows
3 Way Calling
3 Way calling is when you are talking to 2 people at the same time. Those 2 people + the person initiating the call is how 3 way calling is figured out. If the intitiating caller terminate the call, all lines are dropped. However, if a person you are speaking with drops their call, the customer and the remaining person will still be on the line.
Account Pool
Service is prepaid, and therefore – the subscriber technically does not receive a bill. In order to use enhanced services (such as calling 411), the customer must have an account pool with the appropriate funds in the pool. If there aren’t enough funds, then the service can not be used. The account pool is not used to pay for services, and the subscriber will be required to pay for the service before the bill is due.
ACR
ACR (Anonymous Caller Rejection) is when the recipient rejects any call that does not disclose their telephone number. Such calls will go straight to voicemail. The caller will then either hang up, or leave a message. Even though the caller made the call anonymous, Ka-Tel will still have records, and the caller’s telephone number. Therefore harassing or threatening calls can still be reported.
Anonymous Calling
Anonymous calling is when the caller wishes to not display their name and number to the party they are calling. They can either set this feature as permanently on, and therefore prepend a telephone number with *68 if they want to show their number. They can also have it default to off, and use *67 to prepend to the number they are calling to block their number. Keep in mind that many people might have ACR on, and if so – anonymous callers will automatically go to voicemail.
Calling the government will automatically unblock your number even if you have anonymous calling turned on. Since all government numbers begin with 1, the caller will know that their number will be displayed to the party they are calling when calling such numbers.
Blacklist
Blacklist is a Ka-Tel feature that can be setup and managed through the portal. Essentially, one would add a number to the blacklist whether it is a domestic or international telephone number. Any time the blacklisted caller will call the subscriber, they will go straight to voicemail. Since the first 11 digits of a telephone number is the same as the NIN which the subscriber having options for the last number based on their needs, the person that wishes to blacklist a person can enter the offending party’s NINx for the number. This will block all numbers from that NIN, and therefore assure that the harassing call can not ring you from any of their lines.
When blacklisting an individual, they will type the NIN followed by x. Therefore, if my NIN is 52022554377, and someone wanted to blacklist me, they will type 52022554377x. No matter which of my phone lines I call from, I will go straight to voicemail.
Call Forwarding
As the name implies, any calls to the number will forward to another number. This may not make much sense as you are still paying full price for the service, but someone that wants to have multiple numbers may see a benefit to this.
Call Rules
Call rules are rules that makes the phone system smart. I could setup groups of people where they get added to my contact list on the site. I could set up where unknown callers (those not in my contacts) will automatically go to voicemail. I could allow family and friends to ring my phone anytime they wish to call, and business will only ring my phone from 9AM – 5PM. I could also choose to have select callers to forward to another number. So for example, business callers calling my telephone number might ring my office line, and again – only between 9AM – 5PM. This does not matter that I have a cellular phone, business callers will still ring the office line.
Call Waiting
When a caller is on the call, they will hear a tone when someone is trying to call them. The recipient can choose to put their current call on hold, and answer that call. If they choose to not answer the second incoming call, then the caller will go to voicemail. This feature can be turned on and off through the app, or the control panel.
Caller ID
Assuming the caller does not block their number, when recipient receive a call, the name, and number of the account holder will show up. This information is dependent on what name is used when setting up the number with Ka-Tel. Therefore, one would never see Wireless Caller as the caller. Keep in mind, scammers will likely spoof their numbers. Ka-Tel will put features in place that would limit this, but nothing is guaranteed. Caller requires an CID display to show the name and telephone number of the caller. Cellular phones, and most cordless phones in the past 20 years will likely have a CID display.
Data Only Device
Tablet, cellular routers, and other similar devices will be allowed to be included into the account. The rates are based off of Internet rates rather than cellular rates. One could tether their phone to act as a cellular modem, but this might not make sense for regular use. This is because turning your phone into a hotspot drains the battery. Therefore data only devices makes the most sense.
Since there has to be a “telephone” number for accounting reasons, all data only devices will receive a number starting with 0. This is because no Kaldan telephone number will begin with 0. Even government numbers will start with 1.
eFax
eFaxing is the process to use a fax service to send faxes to a number using email. The subscriber will be required to attach a .pdf file for sending the fax. The body of the email is the cover page. Faxes will cost the same as a SIP line, and incoming faxes will be emailed to the subscriber as a .pdf file. To send a fax, the subscriber will be required to send an email to international-telephone-number@fax.ka. International faxes will likely cost extra, and therefore will require funds to the account pool. A fax can be sent at a rate of 2 pages a minute.
Messaging Only Account
Someone who might be deaf or mute will not be able to use the voice feature of their phone. And a data only plan will not work as well since numbers from data only plans are not valid phone numbers. A subscriber that can not hear will be able to turn Hearing Impairment on. Outgoing calls are turned off, and calling the number will get a message to contact the subscriber via RCS/SMS. This will assure that the subscriber can have their service without worrying about how to deal with incoming calls. As with any other subscriber that can hear, they will be given a standard telephone number that is not segregated in the reserved numbers. All government entities must support RCS/SMS services for this exact reason.
International Calling
Prepending the number with 00, or 011 will be needed to call any international telephone number that is not 15 digits. The number is to inform the system that you wish to make an international call. The reason this is not needed for 15 digit telephone numbers is 15 digits is the longest a telephone number can be. A Kaldan citizen can effectively call the full telephone number as a contact for another Kaldan number without the need to enter the International Calling Code.
International Roaming
Ka-Tel will work with other carriers in other countries to make it easier for the subscriber to make and receive calls on their Kaldan number – albeit for a premium. To keep costs down, Wifi Calling is always free even in other countries. Therefore, if one is concerned about the calling rates, then they should wait until they have a Wifi connection for Wifi calling capabilities.
Number Lock
Number lock is the process of forcing a telephone number to a particular IMEI. An IMEI is a unique identifying number for any cellular phone. Number locking prevents a bad actor from stealing your number, and port it to another device so they can get password reset codes. Illegally moving a phone number from one person to another is called SIM swapping. In Kaldus, this is much harder as a telephone number is tied to a person’s NIN rather than being provided from a pool of other numbers. However, while it will be easier to recover from a SIM swap, the bad actor might have been able to do the damage they wish to do.
Number Lock is a slow and tedious process to unlock, and move the number. Unlocking the number can not be done over the phone. It must be done in person, or online. Since the bad actor likely doesn’t have an ID with the proper NIIN, and a photo of themselves, it is unlikely that customer service will unlock the number for the bad actor. Therefore, everything has to be done online if the bad actor wants any chance to do what they wish to do. However, the unlocking and porting process is tedious, and not designed to make it easy.
If the customer has 2FA enabled, this will eliminate the chance of the bad actor accessing the customer’s account. Assuming that the customer does not have 2FA enabled, then the bad actor can log in, and make changes to the service. However, since a person’s cellular number is so tied into modern society, there will be efforts made to prevent the bad actor from getting the number.
The first thing that the bad actor must do will be to unlock the number. Unlocking the number is what needs to be done to port the number to another IMEI. The bad actor initiates the number unlock, and immediately, the customer will receive an SMS notice that number unlocking was requested. The message is as follows:
There has been a request to unlock your number within Ka-Tel’s website. If this was you, type ALLOW. If this was not you, then you should call customer service at 611. If you have access to your account, log in immediately, and change your password. You would receive this chance only once a day, and the request is good for 1 hour. Ignoring the response will assume for DENY.
The bad actor can only submit for a porting request only once a day. This is to prevent SPAMming the customer with continuous repeated request to unlock the number. Assuming that the customer was to reply with ALLOW, then the number unlock will happen within 30 minutes. Once the number unlocks, they must wait for an hour before they can do the next step. This is to cause friction to make it not worth the effort for the bad actor to do a SIM Swap.
An hour after the number lock is turned off, the bad actor will then need to request to move the number to the new IMEI. The bad actor will naturally need to know the IMEI number that they wish to move the number to. Once the bad actor initiates the SIM transfer, the customer will receive another message with following message:
There has been a request to move your number within Ka-Tel’s website. If this was you, type ALLOW. If this was not you, then you should call customer service at 611. If you have access to your account, log in immediately, and change your password. You would receive this chance only once a day, and the request is good for 1 hour. Ignoring the response will assume for DENY.
As you can see, the bad actor needs the customer’s intervention to work in their favor twice in order to port the customer’s number. Even if they did, the number can be recovered since the number is tied to the customer. The customer can not lose their phone number, give it away, or sell it. If a bad actor gets the number, then the customer can go to a Ka-Tel store, and straighten things out. However, while possibly not total damage, there is a chance that there will be some financial damage if the customer replies to the messages with ALLOW.
As mentioned before, if the customer has 2FA enabled, then this process will be stopped at the login process. This is one reason why 2FA is encouraged with all of Kaldan government branches, or government owned businesses.
RCS
Ka-Tel will support RCS for Android, iPhones and Kal-OS phones. RCS is more versatile, and SMS/MMS is considered as legacy technology, and is still supported for basic or KaiOS phones which do not support RCS. Ka-Tel will promote the use of a smartphone within the country, and with that said, basic phones will not be marketed or sold by Ka-Tel. If the subscriber wishes to have a basic phone, then they must buy online. RCS does not support landlines.
SIP Address
All phones, even cellular phones will have their own SIP address. The address will be simple and to the point. SIP calling is free to anyone in the world with a supported SIP provider. The SIP address will always be sip:telephone-number@tel.ka.
SIP Broker Calling
When dialing 111, the subscriber will be able to dial any SIP broker number, and have a very similar effect to SIP calling as noted above. In addition, Ka-Tel will work with SIP Broker to acquire the *883 access code which will make the number look more like the international standard number.
The only exception is that the prepended * is not dialed. Therefore if a SIP Broker number is *883 520225543771, then the consumer will dial 111 883 520225543771 for the SIP call. As you can see, if Ka-Tel was to acquire 883 as the international telephone number, and SIP Broker number, then the telephone number is essentially the same with the exception of the access service code.
Smartwatch Support
For those with a cellular capable smart watch can assign one watch per cellular phone line. Personally, I don’t see the value in a cellular capable smart watch, but it is what the kids likes these days. Smartwatch will just be an option that would work once activated by the subscriber.
SMS 411
One can send an RCS/SMS message to 411 to get telephone number lookup for an entity based on the name and city of the person. If the city is not known, then the name can be provided, however – many more results might show, and the subscriber will have more work to do. SMS 411 does not support landlines. One could call 411, but the call will cost $2.50, or $5.00 for a live operator. The subscriber will get a unique message for all possible options of the query they asked for. This will allow a more consistent look and feel whether the replies are to an RCS device, or an SMS device.
One could also go to https://411.tel.ka to do an online lookup of a person. This will be very similar to the results that one would receive via RCS/SMS. This allows a subscriber without a cellular device to still be able to use 411 without cost to the subscriber.
Speed Dial
Not functional on cellular and rotary phones, but the idea is that the subscriber will be able to set unto 100 entries for speed dial. Instead of dialing the full telephone number, they will simply dial the recipient’s *75xx code. For example, MOM might be *7500 and DAD is *7501. Once they setup, they can dial *75xx from their phone to ring the entity they wished to talk to. This will include either telephone numbers, or SIP addresses.
Unified Voicemail
Every subscriber will have 1 voicemail account. This does not matter how many telephone numbers they have. All telephone numbers will use the one voicemail. If a second voicemail is required, it will likely be for commercial use, and therefore the subscriber will get a business license with an NIN for that business entity. They can then receive a second account in representation of the business. The maximum for voicemail is 2½ minutes per message, and a maximum of 25 messages. If a new message comes in after the 25th message, then the oldest message will be deleted to fulfill that message. Therefore, it is recommended that one keep their voicemail service clear for new messages.
If the customer does not pay for phone service, they will be able to receive free voicemail services. When the account owner calls from another phone, they will press * during the announcement, enter their PIN, and from there, they can access their voicemail features and services.
Visual Voicemail
Visual voicemail will allow you to see the individual voicemail entries, including the name or number of the entity leaving the voicemail. The subscriber can choose to listen to their voicemail without having to call the voicemail line in, and enter credentials. This feature is only available on cellular smartphones.
Voicemail – Email
One could receive a transcription of a voicemail left for the subscriber. They will also receive an .mp3 file with the voicemail. This could allow them to check their voicemail without actually logging into their voicemail account. As mentioned with Unified Voicemail, there is a limit of 25 messages, and the oldest message will drop off if a new message comes in. With that in mind, it might make sense to keep your voicemail box clean.
VOLTE
VOLTE is Voice Over LTE. This is the standard of calling providing a stronger, and clearer voice call without using the old network. Since Ka-Tel will be shutting down any 3G networks, this is a requirement for new devices as they will have to support VOLTE, and can support 4G or 5G data.
Wifi Calling
Wifi calling is to use a Wifi network to make and receive calls. This avoids the cellular network entirely with such calls. You would also be using the Wifi network for data services. Wifi Calling is always free even if you are calling from outside of Kaldus. Again, you are using the locations Wifi network, and not the cellular towers.