[Asterisk-Users] sharing a line w/multiple extensions

[Kevin P. Fleming]

Robert La Ferla wrote:

> Thanks.  That's very helpful because being new to Asterisk, I don't know 
> the history of what people have attempted to use Asterisk for.  It's 
> unfortunate that there's no way to do it because it sounds like others 
> are looking for this same functionality.  I wonder what it would take to 
> implement this in Asterisk natively.  Does Digium take feature 
> requests?  Certainly, this would have appeal for residential systems.

Our list of feature requests is a mile long, but yes, we take them. 
Money makes them happen sooner, sometimes :-)

Implementation of this in a proper way will require true 'shared line' 
functionality in Asterisk, which is a non-trivial thing to add. On top 
of that, there is no money in 'residential' Asterisk systems, because 
cheap key systems can do the job for less than the SIP phones alone 
would cost, let alone a box to run Asterisk on and TDM interface 
hardware. It has a high 'geek factor', but regular people would just get 
frustrated by it (in my opinion, of course). That means the people who 
really desperately want this behavior also have no resources to make it 
happen... so we are at a stand-still.