In general, you will always have a dial tone when you are calling from a landline phone, but never from a mobile phone.
To set up call forwarding from a landline to a cell phone, on your landline phone you dial 72# (or *72 depending on your area) then dial the number you wish to forward to. eg. Your cell phone number is 123-456-7890. To set up call forwarding to this number you would dial the following on your landline phone: 72# 123-456-7890 or *72 123-456-7890. To remove call forwarding on your landine phone, you dial 73# (or *73 depending on your area) on your landline phone.
If a phone is in a business, all you usually have to do is dial '9' and wait for a regular dial tone.
On a mobile phone, +1. On a landline phone, 00 1.
You can't dial a semicolon on a landline phone, nor on a mobile phone, for that matter. It's probably a good thing, then, that you never need to dial a semicolon on any kind of telephone, since a semicolon cannot be part of a telephone number.
Dial Tone
Dial +34 (from a mobile phone) or 00 34 (from a landline phone), followed by the 9-digit Spanish telephone number.
On a mobile: +44 20 (8-digit London number) On a landline or fax: 00 44 20 (8-digit London number)
When you lift the receiver on a landline telephone, the telephone switching office has to connect your line to special equipment that turns the clicks (on a rotary-dial or pulse-dial phone) or sounds (on a touch-tone phone) into a telephone number so that it can connect your call. The dial tone is an indication to the caller that the system is ready to accept a telephone number. Normally, you get dial tone immediately when you pick up the phone, but in an emergency when thousands of people are trying to make calls simultaneously, you may have to wait your turn before you get a dial tone.* Also, if you wait a long time without dialing a number, the telephone switch will take you off the dialer circuit so that it can use that equipment for someone else's call; that's when you hear the "howler" that alerts you that your phone has been left off the hook.The way that a cellphone dials is completely different. You enter the whole number on the phone and press "send," which sends the number as a packet of digital data on a completely different radio channel from the one that carries your voice. Since you aren't ever connected to a dialer circuit, there's no need to have a dial tone.* In an emergency, when the telephone system is overwhelmed, you should wait to make any non-essential calls. If you must make a call from a landline, pick up the receiver and wait until you get dial tone, even if it takes a minute or more. Do not hang up and pick up again; that will only move you to the back of the queue.
On a modem, or any other device that uses the "AT" command set, you can put the letter P for Pulse or T for Tone in the dial string. For example, ATDP9,1800T555P0123 would pulse-dial 9 (pause) 1 8 0 0, then tone dial 555, and then pulse dial 0123. On many landline push-button phones, there is a switch that allows you to select Tone or Pulse dialing. If you have the switch set to Pulse and hit the star key, the phone will switch over to Tone dialing for the rest of that call.
ring ring xx
Dial the full number - including the area code.