Canadian carriers · verified July 2026
You do not port your number, and you do not give it up. You forward one specific case — the call you did not pick up. Here are the codes that do that, per carrier, and the one setting that silently stops it working.
If it seems to do nothing — check voicemail
Voicemail and no-answer forwarding both trigger on the same thing: your phone ringing out. So they compete for the call, and whichever one your carrier hands it to first wins.
In practice this is fine on most carriers — forwarding takes the call and voicemail never gets it. But Rogers and Fido both document that conditional forwarding will not work while voicemail is active. If you are on either and the forward appears to do nothing despite a successful confirmation message, turn voicemail off and test again.
Dial these like a phone call and wait for the confirmation message. Replace <number> with the number you are forwarding to, digits only, no spaces or dashes.
Telus
The only carrier that lets you choose the ring delay.
Forward when you don't answer
*61*<number>#
With a delay you choose — 10, 20 or 30 seconds
*004*<number>*20#
Turn it off
#61# · #004#
Rogers
If it won't engage, voicemail is the usual culprit here.
Forward when you don't answer
*61*<number>#
Check what's currently set
*#61#
Turn it off · erase it entirely
#61# · ##61#
Fido
Fixed ~20 second delay. Same voicemail caveat as Rogers.
Forward when you don't answer
*61*<number>#
Turn it off — note the double hash
##61#
Koodo
Paid add-on, about $5/month. Not on prepaid.
Forward when you don't answer
*61*<number>#
Turn it off
#61#
Freedom Mobile
No customer-adjustable ring delay.
Forward when you don't answer
*61*<number>#
Turn it off
#61#
Bell & Virgin Plus
No dial codes published — use the menu.
Bell and Virgin Plus document call forwarding through the phone's own settings menu rather than dial codes, so we are not going to print codes we cannot verify against their documentation. Bell also sells a separate feature called No Answer Transfer, which is the one you want. Ask them for it by name.
On most carriers forwarding simply takes the call first and voicemail never sees it. Only come back and turn voicemail off if step 3 fails — and if you are on Rogers or Fido, expect to.
Type it in the keypad like a phone number and press call. You should get a short confirmation message. If you see Connection problem or invalid MMI code, skip to the next section.
Do not answer. The call should land wherever you forwarded it — not voicemail. This is the only test that proves it worked; the confirmation message alone does not.
One code, listed above, and your phone is back to exactly how it was. Your number never moved.
If the code returns an error
These dial codes date from the 2G and 3G era. Canada retired its 3G networks in 2025, and on some newer VoLTE-only lines the conditional codes now fail with an invalid MMI error even though the carrier still publishes them. Telus has an open thread on exactly this.
It is not something you can fix from the handset. Phone your carrier and ask them to set call forward no reply — sometimes called no answer transfer — from their end. It takes one call and it sticks.
No. Nothing is ported and nothing is transferred. Your number stays on your SIM and your account; you are only changing what happens to calls you do not pick up. Switch the forward off and it is exactly as it was.
Some carriers bill airtime on the forwarded leg — Koodo around 60¢ a minute pay-per-use, Bell around 25¢ if you have not subscribed to the feature. With Stay Bookd that leg lasts about three seconds: the call is picked up, the caller is told a text is on its way, and the conversation moves to SMS. There is no phone call to sit on the meter, so the cost is fractions of a cent per missed call.
It is worth knowing if you forward your line to something that does hold a voice call open — a voice AI or a human answering service — because there the meter runs for the whole conversation.
Only on Telus, which documents 10, 20 or 30 seconds via the *004* code. Fido forwards at about 20 seconds, fixed. Rogers, Koodo and Freedom do not document an adjustable delay.
Because Apple's Settings menu only exposes forward all calls, not the conditional kind. Apple's own documentation says to contact your carrier for conditional forwarding. So on iPhone, the dial codes above are the way in — the menu will not get you there.
Nothing changes at all. Conditional forwarding only acts on calls that ring out. Answer the way you always have.
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