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Communications IT

Start Your Own Open Source-Based Telecom 207

Posted by timothy from the or-at-least-daydream-about-it dept.
prostoalex writes "George Ou shows how with the help of open-source VOIP server Asterisk you can start your own telecommunications company for under $6000 '...you can build a phone system that can support 72 analog telephones or fax machines, 100 IP hard or soft phones on site or remote, a T1 line to the public telco for 23 simultaneous external PSTN connections, multiple IP-based IAX trunks to multiple remote offices for seamless toll-bypass 4-digit dialing, IVR, and almost unlimited voice mail for everyone - for under $6,000 in a 1U chassis. Such a price point is easily 10 or more times cheaper than a commercial alternative,' writes George."
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Start Your Own Open Source-Based Telecom More

Start Your Own Open Source-Based Telecom

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  • Speed reading... (Score:3, Funny)

    by mikael ( 484 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @01:35PM (#11337951)
    100 IP hard or soft phones on site or remote

    For a moment I thought that read

    ... 100 IP hard or soft porn sites ...

  • And I shall call mine... (Score:5, Funny)

    by GillBates0 ( 664202 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @01:38PM (#11337999) Homepage Journal
    mah-Bell

  • it's nice until (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @01:41PM (#11338036)
    you discover that office class IP telephones are expensive as all hell.

    we went with a NEC digital phone system with 2 wic cards for T1's incoming. the CSU cost us $12,000.00 but the Phones are only $185.00 each.

    phones of the same quality in IP phones are neat $350.00 each, and that adds up fast when you look at around 100 phones plus 2 smaller CSU's that are set up as virtual offices at the ends of other T-1' for the sattelite offices with analog fallback if the connected T-1's fail plus allow us to bypass long distance charges by using least cost routing.

    dont get me wrong, but an asterisk solution to replace what i just bought would be close in price and require a few weeks to get it working. I simply pay the local company to install it and maintain it.

  • I am currently running Asterisk (Score:5, Interesting)

    by x.Draino.x ( 693782 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @01:44PM (#11338072)
    here at work on a test machine, and at home on my XBOX! It's really incredible all the features that are available in Asterisk. Once you get the hang of the configs.. and there's probably only 3-4 configs you will mess with, it's a breeze. I have call routing rules setup to call my house phone, if I don't answer in so many seconds, it will dial out to my cell phone. Someone has also written a bluetooth presence script so it knows when your at your desk ( as long as the server is near your desk ) and when your gone so it knows which phone to call. Pretty slick. Not only is Asterisk been fun to play with, I've learned tons about telecom that I didn't know before.
  • There are so many ISPs right now that are just a step or two away from doing this. The company I work for has been promoting the use of Vonage with our high speed wireless to get away from using a land land with the phone company. And since Vonage came up with a WiFi phone [slashdot.org] our customers would be able to use it anywhere there is one of our hotspots.

    Most of the information that I have seen on VoIP has pointed to the fact that this could happen soon. Our customers have been yelling about this for months

  • Just the basic hardware... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JaredOfEuropa ( 526365 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @01:45PM (#11338082) Journal
    It's nice to see such an impressive setup for such a low price, but to "start your own telco" for real, you'd need a bit more I think:
    - Billing and invoicing software
    - Provisions for wiretaps (if mandated by your local gov't)
    - Customer service (unless you're not going to provide any)
    etc.
    • Wiretap is easy, span the switchport and run a network sniffer. You can play back the conversations via vomit.

      I understand you can do CDR analysis directly from the database to bill back uasage, somebody have firsthand on this?

      Customer service, these days? Just throw them in a queue, give them some brainwashing MOH and let them rot!

      • This also has the potential to answer the ??? section of the profit equation...

        1. Set up own telco
        2. Create numerous obscure charges for the bill (ne ???)
        3. Profit!

        • I think that is called Fraud!

          However with all the fees for that and this on my phone bill I wouldn't miss another one. The damn things are even on my cell phone too! It might be fun to see who doesn't notice a $1.99 fee with some fancy nonsensical name like, Federal IP Network Useage Packet Toll Surcharge Recovery Fee.

    • If you're running a local service, it might not be too difficult, but if you're tapping into a wholesalier network for long distance, determining who gets billed what can be a nightmare. This is it might be a good idea to use a clearing house- they take care of all the out-of-local-network billing issues, and send you a bill for the cost. You in turn, bill your customers based on whatever arrangement you have set up. Also, don't forget that as traffic increases, you might have need for other components, l

    • Re:Just the basic hardware... (Score:5, Funny)

      by lucabrasi999 ( 585141 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @02:54PM (#11339056) Journal
      Customer service

      Yeah. That would be a real problem Verizon provides great customer service today and I would have to invest heavily in trying to equal their support level.

      Gotta go now, I've been on hold for 45 minutes...

      • "Welcome to Verizon, how may we provide you with outstanding service today?"

        Everytime I hear that, I cringe. If you think being a Verizon customer is bad, try being a CLEC...

        you: "I need to get xxx-xxx-xxxx forwarded"
        Verizon rep: "No, MLT shows it's not out of service."
        you: "Mam, your tech went out there and found exposed wire, dial tone is intermittant."
        Verizon rep: "Sorry, MLT shows that it is fine."
        you: *stabs self with a pencil*
        • The funny thing is i have had almost the exact same conversation.

          something else that is scarry, i had a free juno webacount once. Their modems were located about a third of a mile from my house. The software set the computer to call with the area code and the result was a long distance call to a building i could basicaly throw a rock at from my front porch. Well after arguing with the local telco they decided to drop the charges but the verizon service continued to bill me until they disconected my service
  • And so I expect this person to support and manage the system 24/7. There are other costs involved, not just turn it on and walk away.
    • And so I expect this person to support and manage the system 24/7. There are other costs involved, not just turn it on and walk away.

      For the cost that I've seen some contracts with the Big Guys, you could hire a tech or two to live with the system 24/7. So, if you want to pay a few thousand a month for support, I'm sure you can find someone competent to support it. Counting upgrades, support contracts, and normal maintenance, (but not the install) I've seen phone systems from the Big Guys that cost $50k

  • Been doing this already for some time. (Score:4, Informative)

    by jaredmauch ( 633928 ) <jared@puck.nether.net> on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @01:48PM (#11338122) Homepage
    I operate our VoIP system at my employer. We have over 120 users across the globe where their mgmt has purchased/acquired them phones, be it soft-phones (xten works nicely) or the nice Cisco 7960 IP phones.

    We have a few PRIs in some locales which is nice for PSTN termination, but for the most part, we've got an excellent service and we mostly use it for conference calling. We regularly do several hundred hours of conference calling, and the flexability of each user having their own extension is nice.

    We've considered reselling the service, since it would be fairly easy to do, just record some custom IVRs and take those CDRs out of the sql backend and bill them. These things may actually happen, or not.. but th ease in setting up the system and making it work through the power of Asterisk is great. I love it and am using it to operate my home lines as well.

  • It ain't bad, but it sure ain't scalable (Score:5, Informative)

    by Miniluv ( 165290 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @01:49PM (#11338130) Homepage
    I work for a moderate sized telephony services provider, and I can attest that getting above the single T1 "toy" deployment written about here gets really, really hard. The Digium cards are crap, there's very little documentation, and if you try and run multiple carriers then have fun. In a few years this stuff might be pretty decent, and for small office deployments its great, but other than that it is ass.
    • The Digium cards are crap

      Care to elaborate?
      • The Digium cards are crap

        Care to elaborate?

        Sure.

        For example, their TDM400 [digium.com] cards, they will randomly stop working and you'll just get static on the line when you pickup. The only way to fix it is to unload and reload the kernel modules.

        This problem has been widely reported by numerous people on the mailing list. Digiums only action has been to offer to send a replacement card if you call em (which does nothing).

        Don't believe me? Search the mailing list [slashdot.org]

  • And when it breaks... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by torinth ( 216077 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @01:51PM (#11338166) Homepage
    Who's going to have it fixed within 24 hours?

    a) Big company with a trained staff and warehouse full of warranty/replacement parts.
    b) The guy who put it together over two weeks while reading a HOWTO.
    c) Nobody, and your business misses a week of calls while guy from (b) tries to figure out what happened.
    • Actually you can get paid support for Astrix. There are companies that make a living installing and servicing Astrix systems.
      BTW my company currently is using an older Comdial system. Guess what? It is a pain to get spare parts to keep it running. Not only that we where out for over a week because BellSouth let us down. After the hurricanes we had phone service for a day or two until the UPS at the COs ran down. Then it took a week to bet the phones back the first time. After the second storm same thing. N
    • You had to know that this discussion was going to go the way of the Microsoft response to Linux.

      The rational position is to take a hard look at the actual value of this "support" relative to what you're paying for it, keeping in mind that its high cost stems largely from the closed and proprietary nature of the products being supported. It would be surprising if a competitive independent service & support industry for open source telephony didn't spring up, and once it does it is likely to considerably

    • Re:And when it breaks... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by chill ( 34294 )
      a) Big company with a trained staff and warehouse full of warranty/replacement parts.
      b) The guy who put it together over two weeks while reading a HOWTO.
      c) Nobody, and your business misses a week of calls while guy from (b) tries to figure out what happened.

      This is so funny!

      I used to work for a major telco deploying/configuring cell backhaul ATM equipment and your post reminds me of a deployment in Pensacola, FL.

      b) The guys running the fiber at the new facility cut the pair 1' short, so they wouldn't re
    • a) Big company with a trained staff and warehouse full of warranty/replacement parts.

      Like the time my CSU was going bad? It reported errors on the T1. The T1 reported errors on the line. The CSU was marked with a big "Property of AT&T" sticker with associated inventory numbers. So, the CSU was apparently property of AT&T, the line was purchased through AT&T. We had intermittent problems on the line for more than 6 months until AT&T finally was able to determine that the problem was th
  • This reminds me of a story about Steve Wozniak that might not be true. I was told by a lineman once that Wozniak had perfected his blue box and hooked it up to a switch board in his attic. He supposedly charged a flat rate free to his neighbors for the ability to dial into his switch board and dial out long distance using the blue box.

    All I could dig up was this. [vt.edu]The lineman could have been yanking my chain. Comments appreciated.

  • The system is only a part of the cost (Score:5, Informative)

    by QuantumRiff ( 120817 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @01:52PM (#11338176)
    We just did a VOIP implementation at work this last summer, and while we did not go with asterix, we did get a pretty good price (went with shoretel). However, the biggest single cost of all, was not the T1 installation, or the servers, or the software, it was replacing phones. Replacing 65 phones at our company at about $280 each was a pretty penny. Of course, with asterix you can find relatively cheap SIP phones, but they don't have all the fancy features, LCD's, that make it easy to use, POE, etc. So a hint for all you thinking of looking at VOIP, look at 3 very important things:
    1. Yearly costs (maint, support, etc)
    2. Upgrade costs. (how much is it to add each additional person. ie. phone+system capacity+licencing+anything else)
    3. purchase costs ( for everything, T1 installation, installers, etc)
    Look in that order. Many are cheap up front, but their phones are proprietary and cost a fortune, or can't expand in the chassis.

  • Doing it now (Score:5, Informative)

    by gregmac ( 629064 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @01:54PM (#11338217) Homepage
    I'm setting up Asterisk right now for use in our small office. Actually, it's basically setup now and I'm just waiting for my phones to get here.

    Total cost for the hardware was under CDN$2000 (8 phones, 2-port fxs adapter for analog phones/fax machines, 4-port fxo card for incoming lines, and the PC). I probably spent about 40 hours total after deciding to use asterisk learning about it, configuring everything, and testing. Even at billable $60/hr, that works to $4400, which is a lot less than a comparable commercial system (I got quotes). It didn't actually cost that much anyways, since I don't get paid $60/hr. ;)

    We now have a phone system that has an IVR menu, pratically unlimited voicemail, and every other feature you'd expect in a phone system, plus when we open a branch office later this year I can use VoIP trunks to make intra-office calls pretty much free (and easy - encouraging communication between offices).

    The system we have now is getting old, to add voicemail to it is $3000 by itself, plus the time to configure it (actually, I'd probably have to get someone to come in and set it up, since I only know the basics of how to program a few features). It can't do VoIP at all (unless you were to plug something into a CO port .. but then you'd have to dial it like an external number, and the other office wouldn't be able to call an extension directly).

    This hasn't even gotten into the advanced stuff I can do fairly easily that wouldn't be possible with another system (without spend a LOT of money) -- such as, IVR status updates on system status; allowing customers to query their account balance etc.

    • You didn't shop in the right place. I installed a Nortel Compact ICS phone system in a CPA's office a few months ago. It has 4 trunk lines, up to 32 extensions (came with 5), caller ID and voice-mail. The whole system cost $2100 new in a box and I charged about $500 to install it. New phones are around $100 per phone.

  • Looking at this recently. (Score:4, Informative)

    by Blapto ( 839626 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @01:55PM (#11338227)
    I've been looking at deploying a similar system in an office I work with. As far as I can see, the main advantage is thus:
    I can take calls in, on a London number, have them handled by someone in the office, who puts them through to someone just like she normally does and they go to that employee at home. Provided he/she has broadband at home, no extra cost. Brilliant. It's not going to cost us $6000 to implement, more like $300/phone and $500 for the server, we don't need a system of the scale demonstrated, and should make the money back.
    Not to mention, pretty cool!
    • I'm doing EXACTLY that right now. We set it up almost a year ago. The biggest cost is when you have to interface Asterisk to an existing conventional PBX (IF you need to do this, we did). Because then, you have to deal with the specially-trained people who install & provision the trunk card on THAT end. This can cost anywhere from $1000 - $12000 depending on equipment & locale.

      If you can just do it with new IP phones on everyone's desk, it gets MUCH simpler.

  • Ahahahaha (Score:2, Informative)

    by Jailbrekr ( 73837 )
    I work in telecom. I find the 6 grand price tag humorous. If you want a soft PBX (which has been done in the past, with mixed results), by all means go for it. You can converge IP with telephony so you will require multi disciplined support staff to keep it running. But don't think even for a moment that you can set up your own phone service provider for $6000. Try multiplying it by 10 and that will be a good start. Then keep dumping money into it for the next 2 years because you sure as hell won't be makin

    • Re:Ahahahaha (Score:2, Interesting)

      by nolife ( 233813 )
      Can to give some insight on some of the hidden costs that were not mentioned?
    • You can converge IP with telephony so you will require multi disciplined support staff to keep it running.

      Just because you only work with people too stupid to walk and chew gum at the same time doesn't mean that everyone suffers that affliction. There really isn't that much difference between packet switched and circuit switched communications.

      But don't think even for a moment that you can set up your own phone service provider for $6000. Try multiplying it by 10 and that will be a good start. Then kee

  • My own telecom? Really? Wow! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Brento ( 26177 ) * <brento.brentozar@com> on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @02:04PM (#11338355) Homepage
    Lemme get this straight: for just $6,000, I can start my own telecom, just like the big boys? I can bleed millions of dollars in red ink and employ mindless unionized drones who provide horrendous customer service while simultaneously driving my customers away? I can run miles of fiber through the neighborhood only to provide people with 384k upload speeds?

    Wow, where do I sign up?

  • Not a "telecom" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dun Malg ( 230075 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @02:04PM (#11338362) Homepage
    "Start Your Own Open Source-Based Telecom"

    This isn't a way to start your own telecom. There's no means of interfacing with the system at large other than by buying the services of an existing telecom at regular commercial rates. You can't, for example, realistically offer me and fifty of my random neighbors cheaper phone service in our houses with this. This is simply a way to build a PBX-type phone system that can inexpensively serve more than one physical location over an IP network. Timothy apparently doesn't understand the difference between being a telecommunications provider and simply owning a PBX or key system.

    • Re:Not a "telecom" (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Teancum ( 67324 )
      While I will agree with you that at some point trying to turn an asterix system into a full-fledged telecom company would take more than the $6000 mentioned in the article, it would be a good start.

      Also, just like many medium to large business use a PBX for substantial savings, you could put a system like this into a block of downtown businesses and help to share the cost for connecting to commercial telecom providors... in effect becoming your own telecom.

      The #1 problem would not be the technical side of

  • Is Asterisk a secured VoIP system? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by IronChefMorimoto ( 691038 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @02:09PM (#11338434)
    My company is considering the Avaya IP Office Small Office Edition standalone VoIP system. It's basically a box the size of a small router or other piece of network hardware + (I believe) an external computer/server that runs the voicemail storage.

    I saw the product demonstrated at a local vendor and found it to be rather impressive -- move phones around, customize voicemail prompts/forwarding, conferencing, etc. And it was all inclusive in this box. The add-ons included analog device plug-in cards, a pro version of the IP software to allow phone control from computers, etc. I'm getting pricing later this week on the system.

    My question is -- is Asterisk secured/encrypted like a proprietary system? Like Avaya IP Office? One of the bigs things we were told is the security of the calls from the system vs. other, more open standards VoIP systems.

    Just curious.

    IronChefMorimoto
    • For audio security, you do NOT (or better not) rely on something in the phone switch (Asterisk/Avaya/whatever) to do it. You need endpoint-to-endpoint encryption. Sipura equipment (among others) does this as a standard feature. Then the switch just shuffles the bits along.

      In my multioffice/worldwide Asterisk setup the various sites connect to each other via CIPE or Open VPN tunnels, so at least the bits that leave the office are scrambled.
    • Asterisk can be pretty secure.. and it can be pretty unsecure depending on your config. SIP and most of the VOIP protocols are by default unencrypted. VPN or VLAN should be used whenever privacy is required.

      The big thing about Asterisk is control..

      My Mitel phone systems are not my own despite having paid up front for them. They have licensing, limited documentation and pay for software upgrades. Mitel won't even let me pay to attend a user level training course unless I have a "endorsement" from the v
    • I would advise you to stay away from Avaya. My previous employer used their S8500 solution and it was a joke. Overpriced, broke down all the time, the customer service was a joke -- Avaya is a dog of a company. If you're going proprietary, look at Cisco or something.
    • Before you plunk down the cash on Avaya you should take a look at Zultys. Open SIP standard, runs on a Linux appliance, CDR is stored in a mySQL dB. It's not as open as Asterisk, but it's more flexible than an Avaya solution. By using a server that is built around SIP, you maintain flexibility to change pieces and different phones later. If you buy Avaya now, you are buying Avaya for the lifetime of the system. Upfront cost should be comparable either way - but I think the more open solutions will cost less

  • Connection to POTS? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by querencia ( 625880 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @02:35PM (#11338765)
    I RTFA and I think I understand all of the components -- there's one thing I'm not sure I get:

    Once you've got this system set up, where is the connection to POTS? How do you make calls to / receive calls from the normal old circuit-switched phone network?

    If the answer is that you pay for this service from your telco (or other VOIP gateway provider), then you aren't really starting your own telco, are you?
    • That's what your T1 line is.

      No, this isn't starting a telco. This is setting up a PBX for your office, large or small. Timothy just doesn't grok the difference.

      • Thanks for the response... so for your t-1 line, you'd have to make a deal with your telco to route a bank of phone numbers to your pbx system via the t-1. Is there any other way to get this done? Can you operate your own PBX to POTS gateway? I'm already sensing that this is probably a stupid question.
        • I am by no means an expert, but you can get get POTS connectiveity for independent lines in less than T1 chunks, I believe these are the FXS cards which should be available in 1/2/4 line flavors.
          • I am by no means an expert, but you can get get POTS connectiveity for independent lines in less than T1 chunks, I believe these are the FXS cards which should be available in 1/2/4 line flavors.

            Sure, but you still have to pay your telco for 1/2/4 lines in that situation, right?
  • Now all I need is a cell phone that'll switch between VOIP whenever a WAP is available and regular old cell service when one isn't. I wouldn't expect a cell provider to stand for such a thing, so that'd probably end up having to be a roll-your-own project.

  • Easier said than done (Score:3, Interesting)

    by pele_smk ( 839310 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @02:43PM (#11338915)
    I have an asterisk server setup to serve myself, and have commercial hard phone access. Can we get an estimate on the maintenance cost? Businesses don't want to leave the blame on themselves. I definitely see the boom in your normal ISP serving up voip, but I don't see your local tech company serving up its own voip. Asterisk isn't a tough setup, but asterisk isn't the only thing needing setup. I think security might want to take a chunk out of the costs.

    If asterisk servers end up being the new hip tool, I'm ready for the next hip hack, Asterisk war driving. Wireless access at these "affordable" technology companies and "affordable" voip access gives way to free phone calls for sniffers. So we've "war driven" bluetooth, wifi, netcams, security cams; oh ya, I'm ready for voip. Come to think of it, take a stroll within a few feet of my apartment and have a phone call. Access is free!!

    I'm also a college student without a life. So maybe I'm being a bit tough on the security end, but even though everyone is different, I'm sure I'm not the only curious kid.
  • One thing that bugs me about voip is the latency. It deadens the conversation and often leads to collisions between 2 people speaking. QOS in routers can probably solve this problem in the future, but for now there is not much one can.

    I set up an asterisk box about 2 weeks ago, configured it to peer with about 10 different voip providers, and have been testing/logging one way and round trip latency.

    A typical land line can experience between 60-90ms of latency. I found that latency on voip lines range from
  • I'm looking for a way to use a bluetooth headset with my laptop to make voip calls both inside my house and from hotels with broadband. I'd like line 2 to ring at my laptop no matter where I am, and can run a Linux vmware guest on the laptop to fill any connectivity gaps. Can this be done with asterisk and a linejack card at home and some kind of utility on a linux vm guest?


  • Anyone care to predict what monthly national unlimited IP service is going to cost (not including access/bandwidth) in 5 years?

    My bet is free. (Not just for p2p Skype style technology, but for conventional VOIP).

    The revenue here is going to be on international and other network-out billables. (not to mention a very small amount of ad revenue from web interface impressions).

    Vonage and others are going to get destroyed by whoever goes free first: GooglePhone, HotmailVoice, etc.
  • Daryll Strauss [socallinuxexpo.org] will be presenting on this topic at SCALE 3x [socallinuxexpo.org]. His seminar "Open Source Telephony Using Asterisk and VOIP" will will approach Asterisk and VOIP from the ground up. It starts with an introduction to the technology and terminology used in telephony. It will point out some examples of the technology that can be used. Once the base is established, the talk will move on to describe some typical telephony applications and show how Asterisk and VOIP can be used to solve them.

    There will also be a
  • That's probably the way Musimi.dk [musimi.dk] runs - supposedly by a single person. It provides straight IP telephony to anyone with relevant hardware. Quality is great, international calls cheap, network breakdowns so far none.

    (I'm not associated with Musimi, just a happy user.)

  • We run a FreeBSD shop, and would rather stick to our usual rather than include a Linux box on the network. Has anyone had any luck with this? Will it run at all on non linux unix systems?

    I know its karma doom, but I'd rather not run Linux.
  • After having used Altigen in a previous life, and recently trying out and setting up an Asterisk system, I am most impressed.

    It takes a bit more to get your head around some of the configuration items, but once you grasp a few basic concepts, it is incredibly flexible, and extremely powerful.

    One of the nice touches is a wide library of pre-recorded professional phrases. Additionally, you can have custom ones recorded (with something like a 48 hour turnaround), in the same voice, for something like $20 fo

  • Not nearly as cheap or easy as it looks (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Tracy Reed ( 3563 ) * <{treed} {at} {ultraviolet.org}> on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @09:24PM (#11344077) Homepage
    I have been doing just this very thing for the last year and a half. And let me tell you, it is NOT as easy as it would first seem. You really need a huge amount of capital to make this work.

    I tried to self-bootstrap an asterisk based telco as my PRIMARY business supplimented with general Linux consulting with more than just $6k in the bank.

    Here are some of the difficulties I have run into (and solved, but like I said, it has been a long, hard, expensive road):

    1. The technology is COMPLICATED. This means inherently less reliable and big learning curve.

    2. Asterisk is still unstable (even the stable version). A bug due to a completely untested patch added to the latest stable made me look like an idiot in front of a customer.

    3. Standards are lacking. Asterisk often does not support all of the features of many voip phones. What do I tell a customer when there are buttons on their phones that don't do anything?

    4. Asterisk has no billing system built in. Not a fault of asterisk but you can count on having to write your own. There are no existing open sources systems because they are everyones bread and butter. Nobody is giving theirs up so you can use it to compete against them.

    5. Asterisk has no nice end user interface. Again, no real fault of asterisk but you can count on investing in LOTS of developer time. Asterisk configuration is complicated and to make an extensive interface is bound to be very costly.

    6. I have had some bad luck with hardware from Digium. I am willing to chalk that up to bad luck. But the support from Digium is just unusable. I have left a dozen phone messages. Never once got a call back. I had to RMA a part that failed in production after just a few days of use. Yes, we tested the phone system etc and it all looked good. Then a daughterboard on the TDM400P (4 port FXO card) started causing the whole card to fail intermittantly. It took a lot of head scratching and days of calling digium, waiting on hold, eventually ending up in their voicemail box, leaving a message, and waiting for callbacks which never came to actually track down the cause of this intermittant problem. I originally started talking to them on Dec 17 regarding this. They suggested that the card was sharing interrupts and this was the reason it did not play well. On the 21st they said they had seen this problem before. On the 28th they admitted it was a hardware design flaw and offer to RMA the card. Why did they tell me to check shared interrupts then and waste a week of my time? I don't know. Around this time we find out that unloading the driver and reloading it would temporarily fix it but this had to be done on average twice a day. Note that the system is now in production. Worst possible case. So they are going to ship me a new card and I can send back the old card while we keep rebooting the system/reloading the driver on average twice a day. On the 29th very early in the AM I replied to their email with all of the info they need to ship me a new card and I expressed an extreme sense of urgency hoping the card would be overnighted the same day. On the 30th they emailed me an RMA number. I was told I could expect tracking info any minute. A couple days go by with no word from Digium. On January 4th I get an email telling me the card is on backorder! They expect more cards in on the 6th. So I on the 6th I email them to check if it had been shipped because I still had no tracking info and no card had arrived. This has all been interspersed with many phonecalls which were never returned btw. I am only citing emails because I have a record of them. On or about the 10th I call to see what the status is. The shipping personis not available but the operator promises he will call me back the same day wth some info. No phone call. On the 11th (yesterday, as I write this) I call again and explain I did not get a phone call. They are very apologetic and put me on hold while they look into it. After a few minutes I am informed that the card was never shipped! They promis
  • If you want a commercial class VoIP PBX expect to pay about $800 - $1200 per user for hardware, software licenses, and installation. I do this for a living and invariably the final price is right in that range. If you want open source with more support look at Pingtel, although the feature set is not as robust as Asterisk. If you want open SIP standards built on Linux look at Zultys. For a mid size company with multiple offices, a VoIP system can pay for itself fairly quickly when you start bypassing the ph

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