Gradually we're making more phone calls, and from time to time we both need to call at once, or we get an incoming call on the landline while we're making an outgoing call on VoIP. In addition, the cost of the calls is increasing. It's still almost nothing by comparison with landline calls, but particularly the $0.24 per minute for calls to mobile phones adds up.
I'm with MyNetFone, and they have other tariffs: in fact, the tariff I'm on (no rental, pay only per call) is no longer being offered. But the calls are more expensive, and they have a tariff for $9.95 a month (or $99 a year) that includes 200 landline calls, more than I'd ever use. And calls to mobile phones are down to $0.20 per minute. In addition, for that I get two lines. And the price corresponds to break-even.
How does the second line work? Called them up and asked if I could just add a second ATA. I knew I was going to have a hard time when Gavin, the first consultant, asked me what ATA meant. Finally I got connected to technical support, where Marsha told me yes, I could use a dual port ATA. I repeated my question and she sounded particularly unsure of herself, but in the end said yes, I could use two ATAs.
Can I believe her? Hard to say. But as luck would have it, the cheapest new ATA I could find on eBay was a Linksys PAP2T-NA, a now-obsolete model for $24.38. And it has 2 ports, so there's no issue. Signed up for a new connection and got two separate sets of authentication parameters. So Marsha was right: I could use two separate ATAs.
So I now have three separate VoIP accounts. I had intended to use the old one for my
mobile phonetablet, where it could masquerade as a landline phone. It took a
while longer for me to realize that that doesn't really make much sense: not only are the
calls more expensive, I have to pay for all of them. So is there any use for the old
account? It's a separate connection, so I suppose it could be useful at times, but not very
often.
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