Any comment on Asterisk?

[dsr-mzpnVDyJpH4k7aNtvndDlA at public.gmane.org (Dan Ritter)]

On Tue, Jul 10, 2007 at 06:03:20AM -0700, Dave Peters wrote:
> My company phone system is quite old and need to
> replace. I am looking for the option. We are small
> company and have around 60 people. 

Asterisk is just about perfect for you, then. The features will
be superior to pretty much any commercial PBS available, and
the reliability is superb.

You'll want to have both POTS lines, perhaps through a T1 or PRI from
your friendly LEC of choice, and an IAX2 handoff over the Net to a
commercial-scale VOIP provider. I like Junction Networks --
just under 3c/min to US/Canada/Mexico, low prices elsewhere as
well -- but there's no reason to stick with just one. Asterisk
can handle as many as you want to specify.

You'll want a Linux box running Asterisk at each physical office,
running IAX2 trunks between them over the Net. Bandwidth
requirements will be pretty low -- figure 60Kb/s per
simultaneous call at maximum quality, 30Kb/s at fairly high
quality.

And you'll want to invest in a decent microphone to record your
company's interactive menus.

The killer feature for me is simultaneous ringing. Dialing my
office line gets you:

15 seconds of ringing at my desk
15 seconds of simultaneous ringing on my desk and my cellphone
15 seconds of simultaneous ringing on desk, cell, and home
office.
And then it goes to voice mail, if I somehow haven't picked up
prior to that.

-dsr-

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