A while back I ordered Bell's "Ident-A-Call", which basically gives me a second number without having a second line. The price is about $5.00 per month, which is reasonable compared to the >$20.00 an additional line would have cost me.

I have now purchased an additional answering machine (a cheap GM one with 4 message boxes, but unfortunately no separate annoucements per box, still not bad for the price) and a Ring Reader, which splits the incoming calls according to their ringtones.

I installed the ring reader in the basement and split one of the rings onto two different wires. A part from the phone being dead for a bit at one point and one non-working phone upstairs (it's just a loose wire) everything seems to work fine.

However now I need to check two answering machines when calling home. Anyways, since they are in tollsaver mode, it should not be that bad ;-) One thing that I am wondering about is that the savings are not that tremendous due to having to buy the Ring Reader and the answering machine. However one could argue that I would have needed the new answering machine in any case, hence my break even should be at about 6 months. Too bad that this only goes for the telecommunication cost.