[Asterisk-Users] Service codes for MGCP channels

[Paul Crick]

> Mark has been very emphatic about call features not
> belonging in the dialplan.
Hmm.. I read this message, and the couple that came after it and still have
mixed thoughts..

My initial thought was that it didn't make sense - I'd rather have control
over which codes are used to activate which features, and the dial plan is
the place for that. It also gives me control over who can access or invoke
certain services, restricting with contexts and includes. It's also along
the lines of writing it once, not once for every different
channel/technology.

The follow up though raised a valid point about different channels having
different signalling etc which is why these features should be in the
channel specific drivers and not the dial plan. I'm half swayed by this
argument, suddenly it makes a bit more sense, but as a European in North
America I still want the flexibility of defining which codes activate which
services.. *21*xxx# for divert all calls makes sense to me, it's what the
majority of Europe uses as well as all GSM networks. (tangent: I can use *70
to disable call waiting for the current call, but there's no way for a
subscriber to turn it on and off at will is there?)

Is there any documentation anywhere on the intent of the future of this? I
know there's a bug tracker ticket here:
http://bugs.digium.com/bug_view_page.php?bug_id=0000071 but I don't think
this discussion of "where's the best place for this and why" has come up
before?

It'd be good to know what the long term intention is with regards to how
service codes will be configurable, however the functionality is
coded/implemented.