Re: OGo and Asterisk

On August 9, 2004 5:05 pm, Mark Harrison wrote:

> > In short: I'm completely confused ;-) and I would appreciate if someone
> > would explain why and how I use Asterisk.

All your questions were answered by Mark but here is some more info:
from http://asterisk.org
------------
"Asterisk™ is a complete PBX in software. It runs on Linux and provides all of 
the features you would expect from a PBX and more. Asterisk™ does voice over 
IP in three protocols, and can interoperate with almost all standards-based 
telephony equipment using relatively inexpensive hardware.

Asterisk™ provides Voicemail services with Directory, Call Conferencing, 
Interactive Voice Response, Call Queuing. It has support for three-way 
calling, caller ID services, ADSI, SIP and H.323 (as both client and 
gateway). Check the Features section for a more complete list.

Asterisk™ needs no additional hardware for Voice over IP.  For interconnection 
with digital and analog telephony equipment, Asterisk supports a number of 
hardware devices, most notably all of the hardware manufactured by 
Asterisk's™ sponsors, Digium. Digium has single and quad span T1 and E1 
interfaces for interconnection to PRI lines and channel banks as well as a 
single port FXO card and a one to four-port modular FXS and FXO card. "
----------------------

The main reason for introducting asterisk into the project is that VOIP is 
really taking off in the USA and Canada. Traditionally our teleco's have been 
government funded ie: national treasures funded at the public expense and 
give the size of our country some 6500 km from cost to coast and almost 
double that N-s you can understand why that was necessary. However with the 
advent of the interment and around the same time period the teleco's were all 
deregulated. What this means is the in our land the cost of a land line and 
long distance call is still very very expensive in comparison too the EU 
countries. Now when you add on cell phone distributurs, things got really 
interesting, the prices started to come down. Next step, introduce VOIP 
suppliers (not the the network infrastructure is in place) and all of a 
sudden telephone cost routed over the internet are dirt cheap. Basically the 
same in in Germany. This is all new for us and very exciting, as I can now 
rent out buy hardware from a supplier, connect it to my broadband connection 
and either a softphone on the computer or regular telephone and I can use 
either my existing number and area code, or I can have any area code in 
canada with a new number. So for a small business I can now have a Vancouver 
number, a Toronto number, an Ottawa number and a Montreal number (number 
being area code and seven digits) This means that I can server customers from 
coast to coast on a regular telphone handset all with local numbers for them. 
This is a great cost saving for me (each number is 5.00) and for potential 
customers as its a local call. Now all these calls over the internet need to 
talk to a server at some point to route the call. Asterisk is the opensource 
server software that makes this all happen and it can be run on a 486 and the 
best part is that with asterisk I can route the call, incomming and outgoing 
directly to my cell phone and as long as I am in town reguardless of where in 
the world the call if comming from or I am calling too, its still only a 
local call. Hence VOIP is taking off like wildfire in Canada, the States, and 
in other countries. 

So in summary with asterisk I can run my own PBX, route calls to a land line 
or use a standard hand set, use a softphone, or route the calls to my cell 
phone. In order to do this however an besides the server software for all 
comminications that is not softphone based, I need an adapter to plug my 
ordinary phone into to convert the signal. These start at 100.00 CDN for a 
single line, and then get expensive for more connections. However its still 
cheaper for longdistance calling then using the existing supplier over 
copper. So a groupware package that adds the VOIP phone number into contact 
information and allows the user to "click and call" is a very nice and wanted 
feature. It will remain with the end user to connect the back end scripts to 
either a personal asterisk server of one provided by a service provider ie: 

http://primus.ca/en/residential/talkbroadband/index.html (canada)

http://www.broadvoice.com/index.html (us)

http://vonage.com/ (one of the bigger US natioanl carriers)


/ch
 

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