Sunday, May 20th, 2012 at 12:17 PM EST

The ATA is a pretty remarkable device if you think about it.  It’s a consumer device that bridges the traditional phone service to the world of voice over the internet or VOIP.  It has a basic purpose that seems to be almost magical allowing users to make calls with their old traditional phone utilizing a very hi tech VOIP telephone service.  At Phone.com we encourage our customers to use an ATA with our Home Office, Enterprise and Home Phone Plus services.  

The way it’s used is by plugging in the ATA via an ethernet cable to your modem or router if you have one and then plugging a traditional phone that uses an RJ-11 wire into the ATA.  This is an extremely simple process and should only take a minute or 2.  Then you give the new ATA a few minutes to register itself and you should have a dial tone.  The magic is that the ATA takes the user’s voice and converts it into data packets and then sends it to the person at the other end of the phone call.  This is a process that has been going on since 1995 according to Alon Cohen our CTO and the co founder of the first VOIP company.  

One of the biggest benefits of all this is savings.  A home or small business won’t need to invest in a new set of telephones, they can continue to use their older handsets and just plug them into an ATA.  If this is of any interest to you I suggest you take a look at our ATA page and if you have additional questions call our Customer Service numer (800-998-7087) day or night and our operators will be able to help you.  Please also feel free to post any questions on Facebook or Twitter and we’ll be happy to respond to you there.

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Jeb Brilliant

Phone.com

Community Manager