Best 2 and 3 line ATA

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Best 2 and 3 line ATA

Postby curt » 12/18/2014

I currently have 3 phone numbers. I'd like to port them all to FPL eventually.

I'm contemplating of doing one of the following scenarios:

Buy 3 Unlock keys
Buy an ATA that supports 3 different phone numbers with 3 analog phone jacks.

Buy 3 Unlock keys
Buy an ATA that supports 3 different phone numbers with 2 analog phone jacks.
Set up Follow Me on one of the phone numbers, so that it rings on one of the other numbers and when call is not answered, it goes to voicemail.

Are there any ATAs that can do the above? If so, which is the best (and supports G711u, because I read that this is the best codec to get good voice quality)?

Am I correct to assume that once I have the above, then I do not need to pay the $4.95/month home phone fee?

It seems that my account at freephoneline.ca can only handle one phone number. Do I need to have multiple sign-in accounts with different e-mail addresses (one account for each phone number)? Or, is there a way to have one freephoneline.ca account that can manage my multiple phone numbers?
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Re: Best 2 and 3 line ATA

Postby bridonca » 12/18/2014

I do not know of any 3 line ATA devices, certainly nothing under $100, but there are a lot of 2 line ata devices. The best are Obihai devices.

The Obihai 200 has one line, the Obihai 202 has 2 lines, (could be the reverse, I forget) so get both and you got 3 lines. Each device can handle 4 VOIP providers, so you can have 3 freephoneline, and a Google Voice account for the free Canada US calling. Both ATA devices should cost around $100 or less

You need a separate email address for each freephoneline account. so you need 3 email addresses.

All SIP devices support G711u, it is the default codec.

With Freephoneline, your costs are $50 for the SIP settings and a $25 porting fee for each line. There are no other costs after that.

Fongo has a service where there is a $5 monthly fee, one of the differences between Fongo and Freephoneline.
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Re: Best 2 and 3 line ATA

Postby curt » 12/18/2014

Thanks for your quick reply! That was helpful. I'll do some research on Obihai.
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Re: Best 2 and 3 line ATA

Postby curt » 12/18/2014

bridonca wrote:I do not know of any 3 line ATA devices, certainly nothing under $100, but there are a lot of 2 line ata devices. The best are Obihai devices.

The Obihai 200 has one line, the Obihai 202 has 2 lines, (could be the reverse, I forget) so get both and you got 3 lines. Each device can handle 4 VOIP providers, so you can have 3 freephoneline, and a Google Voice account for the free Canada US calling. Both ATA devices should cost around $100 or less

You need a separate email address for each freephoneline account. so you need 3 email addresses.


If I port over 3 or 4 analog phone numbers (Number 1, Number 2, Number 3, Number 4) to FPL, how would I be able use all of those phone numbers on one ATA, such as the Obihai 202, that has 2 phone jacks? How does this work?

Am I correct to assume that I would be able to set up the ATA to direct all calls from Number 1 and Number 2 to phone jack 1, and direct all calls from Number 3 (and Number 4) to phone jack 2? If so, then when I receive a call on phone jack 1, is there something that indicates or tells me which Number the caller had called?
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Re: Best 2 and 3 line ATA

Postby Jake » 12/18/2014

If you are wanting to juggle that many numbers, I would suggest looking into a PBX (they are not as scary as you may think). You can run them on may things, like old computer that you may have in the basement, or I have mine running on a Raspberry PI (cost around $35 I think).

From there you can manipulate the numbers and lines however you want. You will still need at least one ATA to connect your phones to the system, but you could easily make all 4 phones ring on one of the jacks. I have 2 * 2 jack ATAs here to play with (4 jacks in total). One is dedicated for my daughter so she doesn't bother the rest of the phones. I actually have it set up to ring all the house phones once, and then just on her phone to give her a heads up someone is calling her. The other 3 basically work as one, but what it does do is allow us to make several incoming and outgoing calls at the same time (even on the same number).

It's not generally just a case of clicking something and it is all set up, but if you don't mind rolling up your sleeves a bit it can be quite fun. If you have an old computer kicking around it could be worth spending an evening tinkering with as the software is free.

What Bridonca was saying above is you will have to get enough ATAs to cover all the lines you want to use, so if you want 4 lines you would buy 2 ATAs and set up one line on each line of the ATA. This would mean you have to have 4 different phones plugged in though.

It all depends on what you are trying to do at the end of the day. If you just have 4 numbers you need to keep, but you only really have one main number now, just daisy chain forwarding the numbers in the online admin to the main one so:-

Number A forwards to Number B, which forwards to Number C, which forwards to Number D (which is your main number). You set Number D up on your ATA then no matter what number is called it will ring Number D on your ATA. All outgoing calls will obviously be Number D. For this you would just need to port all the number to FPL (or Fongo) and buy one unlock key for Number D.

As I say, it all depends on what you are trying to get out of it.
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Re: Best 2 and 3 line ATA

Postby bridonca » 12/18/2014

The Obi202 has the 2 phone ports. You can add your 3 Freephoneline accounts into it, and you can add another account, like Google Voice.

To dial using a certain account with the Obihai device, you can dial a prefix like **1 before you dial your number. **2 picks another line etc. You can also set up where if you dial a certain number, it will trunk to a line you had programmed earlier. I am sure there are other combinations you can program to your heart's desire. I do not own Obihai gear, because I already have enough older VOIP gear, so I am not sure if you can program which line to ring what, though I would guess that is possible.

As a side note, with that many lines, you might want to look at setting up a dedicated machine as a PBX. You can install an open source software suite like PBX in a box, which offers a lot of options and flexibility. This is not something you get right into, but something to consider in the future.
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Re: Best 2 and 3 line ATA

Postby curt » 12/19/2014

Jake wrote:If you are wanting to juggle that many numbers, I would suggest looking into a PBX (they are not as scary as you may think). You can run them on may things, like old computer that you may have in the basement, or I have mine running on a Raspberry PI (cost around $35 I think).

From there you can manipulate the numbers and lines however you want. You will still need at least one ATA to connect your phones to the system, but you could easily make all 4 phones ring on one of the jacks. I have 2 * 2 jack ATAs here to play with (4 jacks in total). One is dedicated for my daughter so she doesn't bother the rest of the phones. I actually have it set up to ring all the house phones once, and then just on her phone to give her a heads up someone is calling her. The other 3 basically work as one, but what it does do is allow us to make several incoming and outgoing calls at the same time (even on the same number).

It's not generally just a case of clicking something and it is all set up, but if you don't mind rolling up your sleeves a bit it can be quite fun. If you have an old computer kicking around it could be worth spending an evening tinkering with as the software is free.

What Bridonca was saying above is you will have to get enough ATAs to cover all the lines you want to use, so if you want 4 lines you would buy 2 ATAs and set up one line on each line of the ATA. This would mean you have to have 4 different phones plugged in though.

It all depends on what you are trying to do at the end of the day. If you just have 4 numbers you need to keep, but you only really have one main number now, just daisy chain forwarding the numbers in the online admin to the main one so:-

Number A forwards to Number B, which forwards to Number C, which forwards to Number D (which is your main number). You set Number D up on your ATA then no matter what number is called it will ring Number D on your ATA. All outgoing calls will obviously be Number D. For this you would just need to port all the number to FPL (or Fongo) and buy one unlock key for Number D.

As I say, it all depends on what you are trying to get out of it.


Jake:

Thanks for your input. Unfortunately, I do not have a spare computer and my home office is very small. I took a look at http://www.raspberrypi.org/raspberry-pi ... s-on-sale/ and it looks like it will require more technical skills and time than I have.

Your suggestion of forwarding the numbers and buying fewer Unlock Keys, is a good one. I was dreading the idea of buying so many Unlock Keys.

Jake and bridonca:

I have actually four phone numbers:

Number A - business
Number B - fax
Number C - personal
Number D - spouse

If I want to limit the number of analog phone jacks to two so that I only need one ATA, then I'll forward two of the numbers. When I make outgoing calls, I want to show a different number between my business and personal calls. Therefore, I'm thinking of forwarding Number B to Number A and Number D to Number C. Then I'll buy Unlock Keys for Number A and Number C. Am I correct to assume that I can set up the ATA so that calls made to Number A will go to Phone Jack 1 and calls made to Number C will go to Phone Jack 2? Therefore, calls made to Number A and Number B will cause the phone plugged into Phone Jack 1 to ring and calls made to Number C and Number D will cause the phone plugged into Phone Jack 2 to ring. Does this sound right, so far?

For now, I'm not concerned about my fax machine being able to detect the incoming call, because I rarely receive faxes. When I do get a fax, I've just talked to the sender and I will manually get the fax machine to answer the call. But I do want to keep my fax phone number, in case the situation changes in the future.

When people phone for my spouse versus me, we would like to know the difference. With our analog landline, my spouse's phone number is an "Ident-A-Call" number, which means that calls to her number will ring on my personal line, but with a different ring pattern (2 short rings and 1 long ring). Can the ATA be set up so that the when callers call Number D, the phone on Phone Jack 2 will ring, but ring with a different ring pattern or ringtone?
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Re: Best 2 and 3 line ATA

Postby bridonca » 12/19/2014

2 separate accounts with 2 separate phone lines is so much easier to figure out, and that is how I have my gear set up. Paying for only 2 SIP settings is a great idea. You can forward the other numbers over, or even let them kick in as voice mail. So if you pay Freephoneline 100 for 2 SIP settings, and another $100 for 4 porting fees, you are out $200, which is is a sting initially, but you are in the black in 8 months at least compared to one Bell line.

As for distinctive ring, here is a thread here, hope it is of help: http://www.obitalk.com/forum/index.php?topic=1641.0

One other issue I have is reliability. VOIP service can go down for multiple reasons, so it is not a good idea to have it as your only source of telephone. You can get a prepaid phone service from Speakout for $25 a year, provided you do not talk much. But it serves well as an emergency phone. they are other cell phone options of course also, but most offer porting a number for free. So it might be a decent option for one of your numbers.
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Re: Best 2 and 3 line ATA

Postby curt » 01/07/2015

Thanks for your input.

bridonca wrote:You can get a prepaid phone service from Speakout for $25 a year


Thanks for your suggestion! I'm going to use Speakout.
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Re: Best 2 and 3 line ATA

Postby curt » 01/13/2015

bridonca wrote:The best are Obihai devices.


Thanks for the suggestion. I bought a Ohihai 202 from AcroVoice and successfully set it up with Google Voice and a freephoneline number. (The delivery experience from AcroVoice was excellent.)

I tried to send a fax out on the freephoneline number but it does not work. It seems to connect as I can hear the beeping and solid fax signals kick in. However, no pages are sent and the message is "communication failure".

Does anyone know how I can send a fax on the freephoneline number? (I can send a fax out on the Google Voice line so I assume that the Obihai 202 supports fax over IP. However, using Google Voice for fax is not a solution as I will need to eventually use both ports for freephoneline numbers.)
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Re: Best 2 and 3 line ATA

Postby curt » 01/19/2015

As mentioned, I bought a OBihai 202 and set it up with a SIP number from Freephoneline (Number A). (Number A was my Bell Canada number that I transferred to Freephoneline and then bought the SIP Unlock Key.)

I transferred a second number (Number B) from Bell Canada to Freephoneline. I do not want to pay for a SIP Unlock key for this number. I just want to forward the calls to Number A. However, when I try to do this (by setting on "Always Call Forward" and entering Number A as the "Follow Me Number"), I get the following error message:

This number is already used as a FollowMe number by someone else

I am using this number with Freephoneline, but I have NOT used it as a FollowMe number anywhere.

How do I forward Number B to Number A (both of which are with Freephoneline)?
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Re: Best 2 and 3 line ATA

Postby Fongo Support » 01/19/2015

curt wrote:As mentioned, I bought a OBihai 202 and set it up with a SIP number from Freephoneline (Number A). (Number A was my Bell Canada number that I transferred to Freephoneline and then bought the SIP Unlock Key.)

I transferred a second number (Number B) from Bell Canada to Freephoneline. I do not want to pay for a SIP Unlock key for this number. I just want to forward the calls to Number A. However, when I try to do this (by setting on "Always Call Forward" and entering Number A as the "Follow Me Number"), I get the following error message:

This number is already used as a FollowMe number by someone else

I am using this number with Freephoneline, but I have NOT used it as a FollowMe number anywhere.

How do I forward Number B to Number A (both of which are with Freephoneline)?

Hi,

You should check Account A follow me settings- perhaps you setup simultaneous ring there.

Regards,
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Re: Best 2 and 3 line ATA

Postby curt » 01/19/2015

For Number A, I had the following for Follow Me Settings:

Status: Disable
Ring Mode: Sequential (greyed out)
Follow Me Mode: Always Call Forward (greyed out)

I changed it to:

Status: Disable
Ring Mode: Sequential (greyed out)
Follow Me Mode: Call Forward When Unavailable (greyed out)

For Number B, I still get the same error message.
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Re: Best 2 and 3 line ATA

Postby Jake » 01/19/2015

Enable it and check for any numbers added. Even if it is disabled I think it still detects if the number was added.

Also, Fongo, FPL, or any of the other Fongo brands all count the same when it comes to the follow me restriction. So if you have entered this number in somewhere else you will have to remove it from there.

Failing all that, you will have to send in a support ticket and get them to find out what account it has been added to and remove it.
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Re: Best 2 and 3 line ATA

Postby curt » 01/19/2015

Jake:

Thanks! You were right. I removed the number and now it works.

Does anyone have any suggestions about my fax problem that I posted previously above, on 01/13/2015?
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Re: Best 2 and 3 line ATA

Postby bridonca » 01/19/2015

See what happens when you slow the fax speed to something like 9600 baud. Fax over VOIP is never that reliable at the best of times, your internet has to be close to perfect, which is rarely the case. T.38 is not much better.
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Re: Best 2 and 3 line ATA

Postby curt » 01/22/2015

On the OBihai 202, I cannot get the Caller ID to work. You can see details from my postings at:

http://www.obitalk.com/forum/index.php? ... 9#msg61819

Has anyone been able to get it to work on the OBihai 202? Does anyone have any suggestions or ideas?
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