[asterisk-biz] Re: GSM Gateway and Asterisk - No callerID

[Conrad Wood]

On Wed, 2006-03-15 at 14:04 +0100, Aldo Bergamini wrote:
> asterisk-biz-request at lists.digium.com is believed to have said: 
> 
> >It is indirectly, because without topping up at least once on a
> >pay-as-you-go tesco-mobile card you won't get your phonenumber, thus
> >can't call the gateway and that's why I don't know whether and how it
> >does callerid for incoming calls. Until I get a permanent sim-card (and
> >I haven't yet decided provider) I don't want to spend too much time on
> >this device.
> 
> Yes, of course without a sim-card there is little one can do with it..

actually my quest for a compatible permanent sim-card discourages me a
bit.
After browsing around a bit I found the cheapest deal on cross-network
minutes from O2 (tariff: online talker 400 for £45, including 800
minutes). The deal essentially is 5.625p a minute for upto 800 minutes.
Now say I use just my landline to call mobiles. I buy calls to mobiles
for 10p per minute from my provider. Even if I use all 800 minutes I'd
be saving only £35 per month.
To make it worse, we use about 5000 minutes to mobiles each month, but
the 2000+ minutes plans are more expensive at a per minute price.
So I could either buy multiple SIMs and multiple (or bigger) gateways,
but that would take even longer to break even then.
I am beginning to wonder, whether it is actually viable to run gsm
gateways in the UK.
Questions for the list are:

Did anyone manage to purchase mobile-minutes at less than 5.625p a
minute? If so, at which volume?
Am I missing some piece to the puzzle here?

We currently get a pretty good deal on hosting and bandwidth and I
wonder whether amyone would be interested in a joint effort to put up a
multi-sim gsmgateway and asterisk-box up in our hosting center to bridge
calls from voip and isdn to gsm. Essentially we could negotiate with
carriers if we buy the volume I guess. Assuming of course the carriers
don't get all funny about something like that.

Conrad