Telco - Kiss my ass goodbye!

 NO MORE PHONE LINES!

 

 It's official. No more phone lines. VOIP is here, its mature, it works, and its cheap.

Since I already have a fractional T-3 for surfing, putting the phone on it is a no-brainer.

The Future looks bright...
fireworks

 A couple months ago, I learned about a open source software package for PBX called Asterisk*. Like my other open source love, Linux, I decided to see what's up with it. I'm amazed. I've got many years experience with some of the top name telephone switches, Ericsson, Lucent, Siemens to name a few. I wasn't expecting much from something as new and open source as asterisk*. I was wrong.

It does all the things a PBX should do, voicemail, call transfer, call waiting, forwarding, music on hold, works with soft-phones on your computer, with the right card, works with a ma-bell 500 set. (You need a mike and headset for best results, but a mic and your speakers will work, but feedback will be a problem)

It's not for the faint of heart, I must first warn you. You had better know Linux, and be willing to commit some serious time to a rather steep learning curve to learn it, but it's worth the trouble, I can assure you.

I'm not going to write an extensive write up on it, instead I'll invite you to check it out for yourself. This is a self-instructional course of action, I will not teach you, YOU have to teach yourself. You MUST have a high speed internet connection, a DSL or cable modem will do fine. A dialup is simply too slow, please believe me.

http://www.asterisk.org/ -Asterisk Home

http://www.voip-info.org/wiki-Asterisk - The asterisk Wiki, source of all information, (pay attention, this IS the source of all information)

You build (compile) the switch, buy some hardware to interface to your telephone (I HIGHLY recommend Digium's products, for their support of * if for no other reasons) you buy VOIP connectivity from one of the many providers available, and I spend $8.00 a month per line, and you are your own phone company. You can connect your * PBX to another *PBX anywhere in the world without buying ANY services, using the IAX2 trunking protocol. I run mine via a secure VPN for added security. Now mind you, since its new, its not perfect, but like Linux, it's got the world's best hackers improving it on a daily basis.

THIS IS MAJOR FOLKS! I'm as serious as a heart attack, the wireline phone companies are doomed. There's about 3000 of us using it now, and developers are writing everything from soup to nuts for it. It will soon have directory service, SS7 signaling, and follow-me roaming. (Mine does now.)

Mad Phoneman
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