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Inbound Calls

Click on any of the following questions to jump to the answer:

  1. Can I receive Inbound Calls with turboDial?
  2. If I have a call active on the turboDial softphone, can I put it on hold and accept a new inbound call on that softphone?
  3. If I have an inbound call active, can I receive another call on that number?
  4. Why am I getting calls from +1266696687 or +17378742833 or +18656696 ?

Questions & Answers

Can I receive Inbound Calls with turboDial?

In turboDial you can acquire an Inbound phone number and configure it to forward to any phone number you presently have.

With the Hosted Voice/Enhanced Inbound upgrade you can also receive Screen Pop alerts for your inbound calls, along with many other powerful features.

Note: Since the outbound calls you place with turboDial display a Caller ID to the callee, choose your Caller ID carefully. It will often be used for return calls, and you will usually want to set it to the number you prefer to receive inbound calls on.

If I have a call active on the turboDial softphone, can I put it on hold and accept a new inbound call on that softphone?


When your softphone is active on a call you won’t see the ANSWER and IGNORE buttons from an arriving inbound call.

However, if you have the Hosted Voice add-on the you will see a PICKUP button displayed when a new inbound call arrives even when you’re already to talking to someone via softphone. You will have the option of ending your current call (hangup or HOLD), then clicking the PICKUP button to accept the incoming call.

If you do not have the Hosted Voice add-on then an alternative solution is described in the next FAQ answer.

If I have an inbound call active, can I receive another call on that number?

Yes, but that functionality will depend on how you have the inbound number configured.

If the inbound number is configured to forward to a single physical phone (landline or mobile) then the second inbound call will receive the same treatment as any other call to that phone while that phone is busy. In many cases, that means it will be sent to the voice mail service associated with the physical phone.

If you have the Hosted Voice/Enhanced Inbound upgrade then you can configure the inbound number to forward to multiple destinations—up to 10 phone numbers and/or turboDial softphone IDs (email addresses). So, you can have 10 inbound calls to the same number active at the same time.

If you are on a call using your turboDial softphone and an inbound call arrives that forwards to your turboDial softphone, you will only be able to answer that call if you have the Hosted Voice add-on.

If you have Enhanced Inbound but not Hosted Voice then our recommendation is to configure that inbound number to ring at your softphone and at another physical phone destination such as your mobile phone or desk phone.  Then when an inbound call arrives while you are busy on your softphone you can choose to answer it on your physical phone, with or without placing the softphone call on hold. Once you answer the call this way you should also proceed to take ownership for the call by clicking one of the assign buttons in the inbound call alert screen pop in turboDial.

Why am I getting calls from  +1266696687   or +17378742833   or   +8656696 ?

Those are calls from numbers whose Caller IDs are masked. See this website for more information.

If you often get inbound calls from suspicious or seemingly fake numbers, check to see if it’s one of the numbers below. Sometimes, the originating carrier for a call will pass through one of the following words. Twilio converts this word to digits and uses those digits as the ‘From’ parameter that you see as the caller ID number.

RESTRICTED => 737 874-2833
BLOCKED => 256-2533
UNKNOWN => 865-6696
ANONYMOUS => 266696687
UNAVAILABLE => 86282452253
[EMPTY] =>

These statuses are more common when the caller is calling from a VoIP service.

More info from Twilio.

If you believe the calls are SPAM then you may want to add your inbound number to the do not call registry.