[asterisk-biz] MagicJack

[Matthew Rubenstein]

	I saw an ad for MagicJack on TV, a USB VoIP dongle with a $20:year
unlimited calling subscription,  and looked into it. I am in no way
affiliated with MagicJack, except that I saw the ad and was curious. It
was introduced at the TED conference last April, and was buggy through
last Summer. But it's been around a year now, has a budget for
mass-market advertising.

	Anyone know any more details? How do they offer $20:year, when most
VoIP competitors charge at least $15-35:month? Are they using Asterisk
for infrastructure - any thing more than maybe just voicemail?

	If this isn't a scam, or a bubble loss-leader that will collapse under
a $20:year subscription, is it instead a new force pushing down prices,
and pushing ahead the mass marketization of Internet voice?


	I tried to send this message directly to the list WED afternoon, but
once again the Digium filter is silently rejecting my posts. Digium
really should fix that. And soon. These lists are badly broken by it.


On Thu, 2008-03-20 at 12:00 -0500, asterisk-biz-request at lists.digium.com
wrote:
> Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2008 18:34:15 -0500
> From: "Kevin P. Fleming" <kpfleming at digium.com>
> Subject: Re: [asterisk-biz] Asterisk - SIP - H323 - IAX
> To: Commercial and Business-Oriented Asterisk Discussion
>         <asterisk-biz at lists.digium.com>
> Message-ID: <47E1A2F7.7010905 at digium.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
> 
> Seysan wrote:
> 
> > If yes, what have you used for H323 part? I'm not concerned about
> RTP
> > Passing through the Asterisk Box (except maybe for IAX), and it is
> not used
> > as an User Agent.
> 
> IAX2 does not use RTP. Asterisk is always a User Agent. SIP and H.323
> channels using RTP will always start out with RTP flowing through the
> Asterisk box, and based on my understanding of H.323, it is not
> possible
> to redirect the RTP media to a different endpoint once the channel is
> setup.
> 
> In summary, while Asterisk is in a lot of ways 'like a softswitch', it
> is not a softswitch.
> 
> -- 
> Kevin P. Fleming
-- 

(C) Matthew Rubenstein