You can configure the route to accept telnet on a port other than 23 however, the ports that you can use are between 3000 and 3100.
Here is a sample config:
Global config
access-list 100 permit tcp any any eq 3005
line vty 0 4
access-class 100 in
rotary 5
password
login
This will allow you to telnet to port 3005. You can change this by changing the rotary group and the access-list.