Asterisk - the Open-Source PBX [LWN.net]

Asterisk - the Open-Source PBX

Posted Nov 17, 2005 10:45 UTC (Thu) by pilif (subscriber, #3857)
Parent article: Asterisk - the Open-Source PBX

Hello,

I love asterisk.

I really do.

When you are a first-time user, you will be scared off by many concepts, by the terminology and by the lack of documentation.

Asterisk is a telephone system. And as such it uses many terms I was not familiar with when I started. The documentation is quite bad aswell as it's really lacking a easy tutorial.

But with a lot of googling, some luck and www.voip-info.org, one manages. And once you do, you'll love asterisk just as I do.

Recently, I switched over our companys telephone infrastructure (we were connected to the proprietary PBX of our landlords) to a pure VoIP-Solution using asterisk. It works like a charm, is much cheaper (like 60% cheaper each month) and we even have many more possibilities to work with.

Webbased voicemail? Of course
Voice menu application? We don't need them, but of course
Integration into Outlook or any other PIM? Of course
Adding new extensions (phones) without a contractor? Of course
Keeping the phone number in case of an office move? Sure. Without any communication or contracts changing
Good speech quality? Yes - after I began working with some QoS on the router

The migration is now like 5 months in the past and I'm still excited.

And in case you are interested in a very good VoIP provider here in Switzerland that even supports the IAX protocol: We are using e-fon (http://www.e-fon.ch) and are very, very happy with them (I don't work for them, I'm not getting paied for writing this. I'm just a happy customer).

So, thanks, Asterisk team for your work and congratulations for another fine release!

Philip

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