Wireless telephone system including voice over ip and pots

A telephone capable of placing or receiving calls over the PSTN or a packet network. The telephone can store multiple telephone numbers for each potential called party along with preferences that govern the order of selecting telephone numbers to service any given outgoing call. Some or all of the telephone numbers can be associated with a presence service. Presence indicators stored in the telephone are dynamically updated via the packet network connection and are used as part of the telephone number selection algorithm. The preferred embodiment is a wireless system having a base station and a remote device.