[Asterisk-Users] Who would use Asterisk SS7?

[Thilo Salmon]

On Sat, 2003-05-24 at 08:47, Mike M wrote:
> My question is targeted to * users that have, or are considering getting, the 
> competitive operator status.  Would more facilities based competitors exist 
> in the market if the cost of equipment were drastisically reduced?  Would SS7 
> on * be useful from a commercial standpoint to a user?

Speaking for myself I can only answer you with a 'yes, very much so'.
Being grown up around IP networks I find it increasingly difficult to
design communication services without adding voice-capabilities. 

At least in Germany (and I assume this is true for most countries with
recently opened telecommunication markets) it makes economic sense to
interconnect with the incumbent telco. This is almost certainly true
once your network has reached a certain size.

I see two issues which need to be solved before asterisk SS7 comes to
live in actual networks:

Afaik SS7 does carry way more information then what is exposed to the *
user. I have a feeling that quite some functionality would need to be
added before SS7 becomes usable. E.g. providing a restricted calling
party number to an ISP or law-enforcement customer might be a
requirement while this would be illegal to do for ordinary customers. In
another case you might want to provide some information to the user such
as 'this number is not in use' without "picking up" (and imposing
charges to the calling party). 

The other issue is a legal one. In order to connect to the incumbent
telco your equipment has to be certified. I believe unless quite a few
of us get together, this one might be a real problem.

Thilo