I have two phone lines at home with Verizon, a primary and secondary.
Is there any way to setup the secondary phone to show the caller id of
the primary phone when I make outgoing calls?

Hi englishpaulm,

Unfortunately, it appears that there is no easy way to do this.

The number used for caller ID is stored in the telephone network, not
in your phone.  In order for calls from both lines to be identified
with the same number, Verizon would have to have to change the way
they handle your calls.  I checked with Verizon Customer Support
(800-483-4000) and they do not offer that feature as an option.  It is
possible that another carrier might.

It also might be possible to achieve your goal with some combination
of a different class of telephone service and a small PBX.  This would
be expensive and complicated and I haven't researched it because I am
guessing it wouldn't be worth the trouble and expense to you.  At a
minimum, if you were willing to limit all outgoing calls to the
primary line in order to get its caller ID on the calls, multiple
telephones could share that line with a PBX.  You would be limited to
one outgoing call at a time, though.  I can look into this possibility
a bit more if you wish.

If you need any further information about any of this, please ask for
a clarification.

--efn

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Request for Answer Clarification by englishpaulm-ga on 03 Dec 2003 17:31 PST

I'm going to hunt around for another day. E.g., I just found these:

http://www.verizonfears.com/

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=lang_en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&safe=active&threadm=telecom20.346.8%40telecom-digest.org&rnum=3&prev=/groups%3Fsourceid%3Dnavclient%26ie%3DUTF-8%26oe%3DUTF-8%26q%3D%2522caller%2Bid%2522

More later...

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Request for Answer Clarification by englishpaulm-ga on 03 Dec 2003 17:44 PST

Here's another hack site:

http://artofhacking.com/orange.htm

Of course, I'm not really interested in hacking. I was hoping that
since I legitimately have two lines on the same location, that there
would be some way I could program them both to report the same number.
Even if I did have to buy some cheapo PBX etc. (Although, I don't want
ISDN for this.)

Btw, for more info about why I'm looking into this, see
http://paulenglish.com/hereiam/ :)

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Clarification of Answer by efn-ga on 03 Dec 2003 20:20 PST

I looked at all those links and now I know more about caller ID than I
did before, but sorry, I don't understand what you are asking of me.

It appears that you can control the caller ID if you have ISDN PRI
service and a PBX, but you have said you don't want to go that way.  I
assume you are not interested in the "social engineering" hack because
you want something that works automatically every time, not something
that requires an assistant to work once.  The "Here I Am"
specification was interesting, but I don't see how it is relevant to
the question, since the question is about caller ID in outgoing calls
and "Here I Am" is about routing incoming calls.  Did I miss
something?

The only viable option I see at this point is to use a PBX to force
all outgoing calls to one line, as I mentioned before.  Do you want to
accept that limitation and pursue that direction?  Would you like me
to look for a cheapo PBX that can do it?

Or do you want to pursue the orangeboxing approach of sending out a
second caller ID after the official one from the phone network?  This
might work for the purpose of changing what a person sees on a caller
ID device, but it would be unlikely to fool an automated system.  It
wouldn't work if the goal is changing the official caller ID, but if
the goal is changing what a person sees, it might be adequate.

--efn

This was a tough question, thanks for your help!