AT&T has announced a new network level free service called NumberSync that will allow you to share a single phone number across multiple devices. This free service will connect all your AT&T devices to your main phone number. When you add a NumberSync enabled device to one of AT&T’s Mobile Share plan buckets, you will get the option to turn on NumberSync totally free of charge.

With NumberSync, AT&T customers will soon be able to use what is called mobile twinning to share a single phone number with multiple SIM cards in smartphones, smartwatches, tablets, and other connected devices.

This new feature allows all your incoming calls, and text messages to get routed to all your devices at once. You can also share your mobile data connection between device and the better part is that you do not need any special app or hardware to achieve this (but some changes in the OS is needed). Instead, NumberSync will operate over AT&T network, which means that even if your main smartphone is turned off or disconnected entirely, you will still be able to use the service on other devices like smartwatch.

In the future, NumberSync will allow devices to have additional levels of mobile freedom:

• You will no longer need a fitness band and your smartphone to stay connected when you go for a run.
• Forget your phone on the way to the store? You won’t have to turn around to be able to ask your spouse if eggs should be on your list.
• Stay connected with your friends on the soccer field on Saturday afternoon even if your phone is in the car.
• And you can text your boss from across campus when your phone is sitting on your desk and she will know it is you.

AT&T NumberSync is all about connecting those other, non-phone gadgets AT&T wants to sell you. What AT&T is basically doing here is taking advantage of the network upgrades it developed while rolling out Voice Over LTE to kill a growing consumer headache of getting a new phone number for each device (tablet, smartwatch, etc.) and give their hardware partners a better shot at selling stuff at the same time.

Although AT&T NumberSync does not need any special hardware or app, it still requires some changes to the OS. The downside of AT&T NumberSync is that phone makers have to modify software like the dialer and messaging apps to play nice with AT&T network modifications. Fortunately, most of this technical changes are invisible to end users, and to enable NumberSync on a secondary device like a tablet, it would require one final new step at the end of the normal setup process.

As for availability, AT&T hopes to support NumberSync through an ecosystem of devices, with the first device to support this feature will launch later this month.  AT&T also plans to have additional devices with NumberSync support available this holiday season.

Source: AT&T