[Asterisk-Users] VoIP dialtone?

[John Todd]

At 3:20 PM -0500 8/20/03, Mike Ciholas wrote:
>
>Hi all,
>
>While pondering my choices for local dial tone service via a
>bunch of POTS lines or a T1, I began to wonder if perhaps there
>is another way.
>
>Are there VoIP dialtone providers?  That is, could I use only my
>internet connection for voice calls and not have a separate
>T1/POTS bank for that?
>
>I guess I am imagining a company that gateways between the PTSN
>and the internet backbone.  Calls come in and get VoIP'ed and
>sent to me as packets, perhaps IAX, perhaps something else?
>
>First question: Does such a thing exist?  Where?

Yes.

http://www.iconnecthere.com/
http://www.packet8.net/
http://www.nufone.net/
http://www.coloco.com/  (not obviously visible on the home page, but exists)
http://www.voicepulse.com/
...many others.  Use your favorite search engine to look up SIP long 
distance providers.  Some of the above (notably NuFone and Coloco) 
will provide IAX/IAX2 termination.

>Second question: Does it work?  How well?

Works great.  I haven't made a long distance call on my PSTN line in 
months, and I spend pretty much all day on LD calls.

>Third question: Would you want it?  Why?

Yes.  Cheap, portable, failure-tolerant.  Note that your phone 
service suddenly becomes as (un)reliable as your Internet 
connectivity, so ensure that you have those bases covered through the 
"normal" methods such as multihoming, facility redundancy, MPLS, etc. 
I would also suggest you have multiple outbound VoIP providers, with 
automatic failover configured in your Asterisk server.  This is 
easily done.

>Fourth question: How much $$$?

As little as $.01 a minute anywhere in the US, and great 
international rates, depending on providers.  Remember you can get 
multiple accounts, and send your calls to different providers based 
on static tables of who you think is cheapest for that dial prefix.


To address your previous question of "is it ready for prime time" the 
answer is:

   For basic features, absolutely.   I have several customers whose 
systems I have configured for their offices... and I haven't heard 
from them in MONTHS.  The systems have had 100% uptime, handling 
calls from POTS and VoIP lines.

   For exotic features: maybe.  There is a HUGE list of niggly little 
features that everyone is in love with in their particular PBX.  Some 
of those features, Asterisk does exceedingly well, and others that 
are less frequently used, it does not.  However, this situation is no 
different with Asterisk than with any other PBX system that you might 
evaluate, so all things being equal I'd say Asterisk is a LOT better 
than a proprietary solution since you can get under the hood yourself 
and fix things that might need to be updated.

JT


>--
>Mike Ciholas                            (812) 476-2721 voice
>CIHOLAS Enterprises                     (812) 476-2881 fax
>2626 Kotter Ave, Unit D                 mikec at ciholas.com
>Evansville, IN 47715                    http://www.ciholas.com