[Asterisk-biz] Billing software

[Darren Wiebe]

My comments are inline.

VOIP Paal wrote:

> We are a small Mini VOIP provider in Europe. We only have 28 customers.
>
> This discussion is very strange. We have "Thameem Ansari" demanding to 
> run Billing Software on MySQL 3. I did not even know anybody is  using 
> MySQL 3 anymore. We are in 2005. What happend to evolution. He know 
> want to build it in Java him self. Good luck! Maybee he learn how to 
> upgrade his servers first.

What you are saying is not necessarily well based.  There are legitimate 
reasons for being reluctant to upgrade.  If you have something that 
works, why break it until it's necessary.  I'm still running Asterisk 
1.0.9 and it is only recently that I upgraded that far.  Am I scared of 
things evolving?  No, I just don't consider it necessary to upgrade just 
so I can run the latest version.  1.0.9 works fine for me.

>
> We have people like "Operations Jabeens" that want it all Open Source 
> and FREE. He is clearly not able to do it him self but is complaining 
> that he may have to pay a consultant.

I know this guy.  That's not what he was saying.  He would like a 
complete open source voip billing package.  Well, I don't see anything 
the matter with that.

> Alex don't want to use Asterisk for VOIP or calling card. He it 
> claming Asterisk is not up to it. So what is he doing on the Asterisk 
> Biz list. Is he a spy?

Lol.  His comments are not entirely unfounded.

> We used to have our own billing solution. It was working ok but took 
> to much time to maintain. Now we are using http://astbill.com It is 
> working exelent. We where able to install it our self but we choose to 
> pay a very minimal amount to the developers to ensure we got it right. 
> I also have spoken to 4 other smaal providers using AstBill. It works 
> for them. One of them have 12000 calling card customers another one 
> have 6000 VOIP customers.

I have a friend running 6000 calling cards through ASTCC with absolutely 
no problems at all.....

>
> So if your think Asterisk can't do callining card. You are not up to 
> date! Get REAL.

He wasn't saying it couldn't.  He was saying that there could be 
issues.  He was talking about 100s of call attempts per minute.  That 
sounds like a fair sized calling card setup.  The issues would probably 
be surmountable but they might be there.

>
> If you can't pay a minimal fee to get a billing system for your 
> business running. Get another business.

Again, nobody said that.  When I got into voip, the cheapest voip 
billing software I could find was $2000.  Ok, that may be pocket change 
to some of you.  I could not afford it though.  I was providing a 
service for a very small and distinct market and was not willing to 
borrow a bunch of money to sink into this venture as I knew the return 
would not be there.  Is there something wrong with that?

>
> Mark Spencer and Digium have given us Asterisk as a gift. Many peoole 
> are earning money on it Open Source is a fantastic but please 
> understand that Open Source is not FREE. If you can't do it your self 
> You pay.

That is somewhat true.  It all depends how you define the word FREE.  It 
could be that it actually is FREE.

Darren Wiebe
darren at aleph-com.net

>
>
> PAAL
>
>
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