What is simultaneous ring?

Speed is the whole argument. Nobody waits their turn in a rotation, so the call is answered as fast as anyone is available.

Small teams use it because it needs almost no configuration. Add the numbers, done.

The cost is attention. Every phone rings for every call, so people learn that most rings are not for them and stop reacting quickly.

It also breaks quietly when one destination answers automatically. A mobile with voicemail set to pick up after fifteen seconds will win the race and swallow calls the team was about to take.

Say a three-person landscaping business rings the office phone and two cell phones together. On Wednesday the owner's cell is in a dead zone at a job site. A customer calls at 11:10. The network can't reach the owner's phone, so it diverts that leg straight to his voicemail, which answers within two seconds.

Your phone system sees an answer. It stops ringing the office and the other cell, and connects the customer to a voicemail greeting on a personal phone. The office manager, who was reaching for the handset, sees the ringing stop and assumes someone else got it.

Many phone systems have a setting for this, usually called call confirmation or answer confirmation. When a cell leg is picked up, the system plays a short prompt, something like press 1 to accept this call, before connecting. Voicemail can't press 1, so that leg is dropped and the other phones keep ringing.

Vendors use several names for nearly the same thing. Ring group, ring all, and call forking usually mean simultaneous ring. A hunt group usually means the opposite: one phone at a time, in order. Check the behavior with a test call and ignore the label, because some portals use hunt group for both.

There's a capacity cost that rarely gets mentioned. When your system rings an outside cell phone, it places an outbound call to do it. One incoming call that rings three cells is using four channels on your trunk for as long as the ringing lasts. On a small trunk of four or six channels, two callers arriving together can use every channel you have.

Desk phones and apps registered to your own system don't count this way. Only legs that leave for an outside number do.

If you're close to your channel limit, ring internal phones together and send outside numbers only as a second step. You'll keep most of the speed and free up the trunk.

GreetKeeper is usually the destination rather than one of the racing phones. Calls that the group did not take come to the assistant.

That avoids the voicemail race entirely, because the fallback is a conversation that can book or take details.

Transfers out work the other way. A call handed to your team can ring whichever phones you want, using whatever rule your system already has.