[wellylug] Asterisk PABX - Does Any one use this?

[Edmund A. Hintz]

>I had a long talk to Jamie B last night about it, and I am looking
>forward to getting it installed, even if I just do it at home. for the 3
>of us :)
>

    That's actually my final goal. I'm already using Vonage for VOIP to
the states(it was my primary US phone long before we moved down here),
and it's brilliant. But it means we've got 2 phones around the house, one
NZ and one US. Ugly. The idea here is that I'll use Asterisk to
intelligently route calls such that the PSTN origin of a call is
transparent. People call us either via the US or NZ # and the phone just
works, likewise when we dial out Asterisk routes the call to the
appropriate network.

>BTW: where (if anywhere) can you get *cheap* VoIP hardware (FXO/FXS
>adapters, handsets)?  I've been intending on looking at playing with
>Asterisk for a while, but have been held back by the price of suitable
>hardware :-(
>

    Ebay is about all I've found for cheap enet-fxs, starting around $60/
us. Caution-the used Vonage adapters may not be usable with anything
other than Vonage, it's unclear whether one can get around their lockin.
As for the FXO it seems Digium is the logical choice. At $100/us I'm not
sure I'd call it cheap, but at least a good bit of the cash is going to
the Asterisk project. But, AFAIK it's not Telepermitted, so using it in a
business environment could be a bit dodgy if Telecom decided to be wankers.

>Alternatively, is there anyone in NZ who offers a similar (and similarly
>cheap) service like VoicePulse (i.e. a single phone number pointed at a
>SIP or IAX endpoint)?

    Somebody asked this a week or two back on NZNOG, but to my knowledge
there was no real solid reply. Seems like Telstra and ihug have sip
gateways but they're more for systems whereby they provide the whole
package (hardware, et. al.). Presumably with a contact within one or the
other one might be able to get something going, but it doesn't appear
that there are any providers doing the iconnecthere/voicepulse thing
locally at the moment. Though if such an outfit exists I (and I'm sure a
whole mess of others) would love to hear of it...


Regards,

Ed Hintz
ed at hintz.org