[Asterisk-Users] Solution for 1 time blast of 200, 000 recorded calls

[Chris Bagnall]

> I'm helping out with a political campaign and would like to use 
> asterisk to blast out about 200,000 calls with a short 
> message from the candidate.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I'd find it very difficult ethically to
be involved in this, even assuming it's legal.

Check very carefully that it's legal in your jurisdiction.

Assuming you get over those hurdles, for a provider, you'd want someone with
per-second billing and no minimum call charge.

If you get free local calls within a set area and it's a local election,
consider separating your dial list out into local (i.e. free) calls and
out-of-area calls. Use the VoIP provider for the out-of-area calls, and your
T1s for local calls.

200,000 calls isn't too bad if you're prepared to space it over a period of
time. If you're looking to target homes, you'll probably be aiming for times
from 6pm - 8pm during the working week (after people get home, but before
the kids go to bed), so if you wanted to do it over 2 weeks (20 hour window)
you'd need to process 10,000 calls an hour, or 166 calls a minute. There was
a discussion on the list recently about dimensioning for systems capable of
500 concurrent calls, which may be worth a read.

Regards,

Chris
-- 
C.M. Bagnall, Director, Minotaur I.T. Limited
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