Work wants to give me a mobile (cell) phone. How do I make this work most effectively without having to carry two phones everywhere I go?

Dealextreme has dual sim adapters, but I'm not sure how they work. I'm assuming only one sim is active at a time. http://www.dealextreme.com/search.dx/search.dual%20sim%20iphone There are cases that hold the adaptors as well. I haven't used these, there are forums on the site though, you will get more information from them.

Can't they just reimburse you the amount of the plan they would pay for to give you the phone? That's how they do it at my work. They kick in $40 towards your existing plan and you can use your phone. My sister works for a big company and has a company blackberry on which she can make personal calls without problem. Same for my brother. Is this not an option at your workplace? You might want to ask your supervisor or HR dept.

2nding loquat: you really just want to be using one phone and have your company pay for it. Presumably, there are work benefits to carrying your iPhone too, so you can access/send work email and web pages on the go. Failing this, Google Voice is your friend.

I'm in Australia, so don't think Google Voice will work for me. On the idea that they just pay me for my phone, I don't think they like the idea of me using my personal number because they can't take it off me when I leave! Keep the ideas coming tho.. :)

I use a work mobile for personal use to avoid carrying two. It's a little finicky to work out but I haven't yet seen a downside. I took the company mobile number and told my friends they could call me text me on this but there might be some delay in me getting back to them. This worked for me only because I was changing country and jobs at the same time. About 1 year into this I shopped around and got a hugely improved deal on minutes and texts. I got an agreement from HR that I can use the free excess for personal use. I had to show what I was using monthly just on work related calls first. If I exceed the monthly tariff I simply highlight any personal calls over the amount of the tariff and don't claim re-imbursement for those ( I have to send in the monthy bill to be re-imbursed, they don't do it from a company account so again YYMV) My company is very flexible about calls home and accept that rountinely I may have to contact a family member as I'm juggling childcare and travel quite a bit so they have never questioned calls home or to my partner's mobile. I increasingly tend to Skype friends & family from home (you may be able to do that on your iPhone?) so it is rarely an issue that someone needs me to ring them back urgently from the mobile. If it did happen I would simply highlight it and not claim it next bill.

Sadly, I asked this same question http://ask.metafilter.com/22195/Can-you-hear-me-now-Good I thought dual sim capability would have been a common feature by now.

What I did under similar circumstances was forward my work phone to my personal number. The last thing I wanted to do is be one of those guys with two phones on him. My address book on my personal phone had contacts for both my personal and work. My work did not require me to have a specific work-specific voicemail so I just changed my personal email to be something professional sounding but not too job specific so whether it was my mother, or the CEO, they knew they were through to me. My situation was fortunate because my calling plan offered free mobile-to-mobile minutes (AT&T in the US) and so most of the work contacts called me from their work number (or I would call them on their mobile) so there was never an issue of burning through all of my minutes. To manage my work/life balance, if a work call came in after hours I'd dismiss it to voicemail. For the most part, my boss and coworkers didn't expect me to be oncall 24/7. I kept my work Nokia off in my bag. When it was off, the battery lasted a surprising amount of time and I would fire it up when I needed to call someone internationally, a long non-mobile-to-mobile number, or when I was traveling abroad. And when I was bored and wanted to play Snake. The only catch was the call forwarding from the phone company does not forward texts. 99.9% of the people that would use my work number would not text me so it wasn't an issue. Because I could get work email on my iPhone I was never out of the loop. I tried one of those dual sim adapters (on a Sony Ericsson K800 pre-iPhone) and a) the cover wouldn't close with it and b) didn't work for shit... you're still on either one line or another and you have to switch back. My SE phone had to power cycle to switch and sometimes would just lock up or shut off which it didn't do with just one SIM. If you're wanting to use an iPhone 4, I think you're out of luck due to its tiny SIM card and impossible to wedge in a ribbon cable somewhere for the second SIM. Like pencroft I would have thought that if not dual sim an elegant dual line solution would be available now from the mobile carrier. Or a middleman company similar to Google Voice in the US (GV is nice, but since most people had my work # or my pre-GV cell #, it isn't great unless I tell everyone and their dog I have a new number)

I have to deal with this problem too as work will not let me make personal calls on my work mobile without paying for them. This wouldn't be too much of a problem except that I have a Blackberry (which sucks for everything bar email) and the mobile network they are with charges a fortune for calls. In the end I put up with taking both phones to work, sticking my personal one in the drawer and checking it periodically over the day. At night, when I get home the work one goes into my bag and never comes back out again. One redeeming factor of the Blackberry is that you could turn it off automatically at a set time each night and then on again in the morning. I have mine set to be off between 7pm and 8am. Diverting your calls won't work because depending on which way you do it, either you'll end up paying for the calls you dial out (because you're using your own phone) or you'll pay for diverting all your calls from your personal mobile to your work one. Best solution is to see if work will let you use your work number for personal calls.

http://ask.metafilter.com/170938/Work-wants-to-give-me-a-mobile-cell-phone-How-do-I-make-this-work-most-effectively-without-having-to-carry-two-phones-everywhere-I-go#2458866: "You could also use a Google Voice Number... you can set it to ring your work phone during work hours, and your cell at other times (or both at the same time)" I know the OP already said why this can't happen, but there's a technological reason why it can't either. Google Voice is not some magical do anything you want to do with a phone and make you cookies at the same time tool. Let's say that my phone number is 111-1111 and my work number is 222-2222. If I have Google Voice (whose number is 333-3333) and someone calls me at my home number, Google Voice dies not know that. It will not forward that call to my work number. No matter how badly I want it to. The only calls that Google Voice knows about are calls to the Google Voice number. Thus, if you want to use Google Voice to forward calls, you have to make sure people are calling you at the Google Voice number. Which means that you get to tell your boss(es) at work that in order to call you at your work number they have to call a number different than the one they gave you. That might not be a big deal but it's something to consider. What might be a big deal is that some companies have a phone number tied to the position. So let's say I'm the new guy people call when they have problems getting wockets out of their pocket. I get the company phone so people can call me when they have a wocket problem. Telling people in my office about the new number isn't that big of a deal. Changing contact information on the website and printed materials could be a big deal but is doable. Telling every single person who might want to call the wocket guy is going to be a problem. I guess you could make a voicemail message saying to call you at the new number. But since people aren't using the number that the company gave you Google Voice didn't really forward calls from your company phone to your personal phone did it?