[Asterisk-Users] CE certification for Europe

[David Stubbs]

we are what you would call a small company dwayne, we have less that 20
extentions in use but.. Asterisk is working quite well for us, and it
beat EVERYTHING we could find in the market for COST! and functionality.
in fact it came in under £3,000 less!. ( and the was with no voice mail 
queues . . .. etc). 

The most expesive thing we got was the channel bank.. 

The the most conforting thing we got was the support of digium and Mark.
If we have a problem, we searching though the new groups, if that don't
help, we have the irc channels.. thanks to all you great people on there
:-). But if that doesn't help or we need help NOW .. we are company down
time means mouny, Mark is always ready to help us out of the shit. 

For that we would gladly pay double.. and we would still have a cheeper
system :) 

GPL is great, if for some reason the main develpers can no longer work
on a project, people can step in. If you want to change direction you
can but. 

Digium Have provide I wonderfull mix, the freedom and security that the
GPL gives a company AND the support it needs when we needs it.




On Fri, 2003-04-04 at 08:16, asterisk-users-admin at lists.digium.com
wrote:
> > first off the majority of work on the cards was made by zapata guys, let's
> > give them the credit. secondly are you talking about hardward support or
> > asterisk software support?
> 
> Wrong.  The Tormenta2 was truly a joint venture between us.  Digium
> *totally* funded its development, *and* I personally did most of the
> driver work.  The zaptel engine was totally rewritten from the original
> tor.c driver.  Just compare what is//was on the zapata site with what is
> in CVS and see for yourself.
> 
> > also we're getting off base here, my intent was NOT to bash digium for their
> > prices but rather find a way to get people without the huge budget of a
> > great company like yours, to be able to add to the project in a meaningful
> > way. few can at the current pricing schema, that's why the original makers
> > sold it at ~$250 USD and released it GPL in the first place. just my two
> > cents
> 
> The original torisa was a very different beast.  The BOM was substantially
> less expensive, it only used a two layer board, and it was hand built by
> Dude.  There is a reason you can't buy them anymore.  The Tormenta 2 has
> to be done with surface mount, had a very substantial capital investment
> in producing it, not to mention all the additional driver work, and has
> received FCC certification (which presumably you would not be providing in
> your knock-off board -- and no, Digium's certs don't extend to you).
> 
> When volumes increase, we will be in a better position to try to reduce
> cost (and thus price).  Right now, the quantities of boards being moved
> are very small (on the scale of things) and we have priced ourselves
> extremely competitively compared with existing product offerings.  We're
> focusing on building a good support and development infrastructure, and
> it's a lot of hard work.
> 
> Digium has operated unlike essentially any other telecom company.  We have
> released all our drivers and software under Open Source licensing -- on an
> architecture in which almost all the real logic lies in the software.  We
> have tried to be as open as possible, in spite of the risks that we open
> ourselves up to.
> 
> We know we will not always be the low cost leader -- we can't do that and
> at the same time pour as much into Asterisk as we do, and to do so would
> be suicide.  In order to continue to build our hardware revenues, we will
> have to defend our position with quality of product and support, and
> through the loyalty of customers who, like Steven, see real value in what
> we are doing and see the long term value in supporting us as a company.
> 
> Mark
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Asterisk-Users mailing list
> Asterisk-Users at lists.digium.com
> http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users