Patton Electronics has announced the shipping of its SmartLink™ Micro Analog Telephone Adapter.It is being touted as the smallest analog telephone adapter in the market. Its tiny size and light weight is meant to minimize shipping costs for VoIP service providers. It connects any standard analog phone or fax machine to an enterprise or service provider VoIP network. It turns out to be a tiny yet powerful device which makes state of the art VoIP available to any home or office with broadband access.

Currently Patton seems to have emerged as a frontrunner in the race for building the smallest functional ATA. Although it is a single line unit but still I was wondering whether it could have been a two line unit so that it could have been used for something else. Not everybody has a technical bent of mind and customers looking for single line service may not even bother to look whether it is a single or a double line unit.

Another question strikes my mind - Whether this small unit is capable enough to put out enough power to drive telephone ringers without getting heated up. The company specification is 3REN. Alas! The phone company standard is 5REN.

I would like to give a piece of advice to these companies -What we are looking for is a higher REN value rather than smaller and smaller ATA's. Are u guys listening???