<p>D2’s new apartment in LA has a security system where anyone who comes to see her has to call her apartment to be buzzed in. For some reason, she can only have an 818 area code phone number for this purpose, so we’re looking at the cheapest options for adding a phone line so she doesn’t have to change her cell phone number, which is a Chicago area code.</p>
<p>Talked to AT&T this morning; they can add a sort of land line for $9.99/month (they would send the equipment). But then we looked at the Magic Jack option, which is $19.95/year, but you have to buy the equipment, which we’ve seen for around $40.</p>
<p>Any other options out there we should check in to?</p>
<p>Look at [url=<a href=“http://www.obitalk.com%5DOBiTALK%5B/url”>http://www.obitalk.com]OBiTALK[/url</a>] with google voice . Device costs $40-50 and everything else is FREE.</p>
<p>I think MagicJack is the cheapest. But I’ve heard some bad things about their customer service if there’s an issue.</p>
<p>I would think about making sure you have the ability to forward calls from that number. That way the call will ring on your kid’s regular cell. </p>
<p>I would consider adding a line because then she has the option of using an LA number and even turning off the Chicago number in the future. My kid did that, set up a forwarding message in case someone reached voicemail on one line, and then gave up the old number. The idea in that case was to let people hiring in the industry see that she was actually in LA, living in LA, etc. Don’t know if that mattered but it was a cheap way of doing that. Friends could call on the old number and then after a while that didn’t matter.</p>
<p>BTW, 818 is a desirable area code because 8 is a good luck number in Chinese. Sounds like money or prosperity. My number has three 8’s and one of my kids has four. The numbers to avoid are 4 and 9 because those sound similar to death and about to die.</p>