Your building says you need a landline. What to ask next.
Ask your building one question: is the entry system wired through apartment phone lines, or does the lobby panel dial out on a building line? If the panel dials out, a mobile number goes in the same field a landline number would, and you need no phone service at all. Only the first kind of system genuinely requires a line in your unit.
You asked how to get the buzzer working and were told to order a home phone. It might be true. In most Toronto buildings it is not, and the person telling you believes it either way.
Why it gets said when it is not true
Entry panels have been in Toronto buildings for decades. For most of that time, the number typed into each unit row was a home phone number, because that is what people had.
Staff turn over, the reason gets lost, and the rule survives as a rule. Nobody is lying to you. The panel has simply never been asked to hold anything else. What the panel is actually doing.
The question to ask, word for word
Send it in an email rather than asking at the desk. It is a specific question with a specific answer, and it stops the conversation turning into opinions about mobile phones.
| If they say | Then | Your move |
|---|---|---|
| The panel dials out on a building line | No line needed in your unit | Give them a number to store and ask them to confirm |
| It runs through the apartment phone lines | A line genuinely is required | Ask about the copper retirement plan before signing up for one |
| They do not know | Common, and answerable | Check your own wall, or ask the panel vendor name |
You can often answer it yourself in thirty seconds. Here is how.
If they insist and the panel dials out
Stay polite and specific. You are not challenging a policy, you are asking them to store a number in a field they already maintain.
- Ask what number formats the panel accepts, rather than arguing about mobiles.
- If they mention long distance, they are describing a local calling restriction. That is a real constraint and it has a real answer.
- Ask for the refusal in writing. It rarely survives being written down.
The local calling restriction is the honest version of most of these conversations. The panel dials on a line limited to local calls, so the number stored has to be local to the building. Why that catches so many people.
What to give them instead
A number chosen to be local to your building satisfies the constraint they are actually describing, and it can ring more than one phone, which a landline never could.
BuzzMeBro works that out from your postal code and rings up to 4 phones for $11.99 a month, with nothing installed in the apartment. Get your number.
Questions people ask
Can a building require me to have a home phone?
A building can only require what its system needs. If the entry panel dials out on a building line, there is nothing for a home phone to do, and asking the question in those terms usually resolves it without a dispute.
What if the panel really does run through apartment lines?
Then the requirement is genuine and no number will substitute. Ask what the building plans to do as carriers retire copper, because that system has a limited life and the answer affects you.
Should I escalate to the condo board?
Only after the written question has gone unanswered. Boards respond well to a specific technical question and badly to a complaint about a superintendent. Keep it to the system rather than the person.
They said mobiles are not secure. Is that true?
A buzzer call is an ordinary phone call to whatever number is stored, so a mobile is neither more nor less secure than a landline. What matters is that only a call from your own lobby panel can open the door.
What do I actually ask them to store?
A number that is local to the building. If more than one person lives with you, BuzzMeBro gives the apartment one such number that rings every phone, so the building only ever has to make this change once.