Asterisk is in fact a Linux Based PBX. It’s an amazing little piece of open source software!
It allows you to set up a telephone exchange that can do just about everything you ever wanted. It does voice mail, can email you voice mail to you, have internal extensions, and I’ve even heard talk that it might be possible to hook it into Skype. There is even cheap hardware available (FXO Hardware @ $20 on ebay) to hook it up to you existing telephone line, to receive and make calls on the real telephone network.
The real power of Asterisk is it’s ability to be used for VoIP. I’ve done with with my new VoIP line that was given to me for free when I signed up for iiNet’s Broadband 2 ADSL. This is a VoIP account that connects to the normal telephone network giving me a proper telephone number. It simple sends its data to the normal telephone network over the internet rather than over normal copper telephone line. It offers cheaper call rates on the whole, but of most importance to me was the 10c untimed calles to all Australian Capital Cities. Much better than those nasty timed calls!! I also get free iiNet to iiNet phone calls.
If there are two people with VoIP phones / Asterisk servers, you can set it up so that the call goes entirely over the internet, giving you completely FREE call!!
Another thing I’ve been able to do with Asterisk is give Ruby a landline telephone line. Before now she didn’t have access to a telephone line and had to use her mobile for everything. We set up a SIP softphone on her computer which connects to my Asterisk PBX server over her Unwired internet connection, and allows her to dial out and receive calls using my VoIP line.
VoIP calls are obviously subject to your internet connection speeds and usage. You pretty well have to have a Broadband connection, and also recommend a router that offer QoS. This will allow you to give priority to the VoIP information over other data usages, and help maintain your call quality.
At the moment I’m running on old hardward so don’t actually have QoS. Call quality has generally been very good, but I make sure I pause any downloads to make sure the data gets through ASAP.
If your looking into cheaper calls VoIP is certainly the way to go! Let me know if you guys find any other fancy stuff you can do with VoIP as I know you will!!
I’ve used Asterisk for about five years, and it has worked great. If you don’t have a spare box, you can toss it in a VM with about 128MB mem, or even run it from some routers.
My plan back to the U.S. costs about 1c/min, while my plan with Freshtel is about 4c/min. Works great, until your ADSL is out