[MLUG] More Asterisk!

[Nathan Odle <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

Ok,

We are soooo terribly close to pulling the trigger on an Asterisk box 
for the phone system at our new offices.  The main thing holding us back 
(until this evening) has been finding a provider that would provide the 
following things:

1)  Flexible Pricing:  Most VoIP providers seem to be focusing on the 
residential market, with things like $19.95 unlimited plans.  When they 
do have a business plan, more often-than-not they have some retarded 
$49.95 for 1000 minutes and a single SIP channel.  Very few support 
pay-as-you-go (i.e. per minute charges and nothing more) and even fewer 
advertise multiple channels.  Up until tonight, the best I had found was 
VoicePulse Connect (connect.voicepulse.com).  They provide $0.029/minute 
pay-as-you-go and up to 4 channels per account.  However, they fall 
short in not having any number availablity in the 573 area code, which 
brings me to my next must-have-feature.

2) 573 or Toll-Free area code:  Because a lot of our callers are in 
Columbia and still pay a regular long-distance bill, this is important.  
Until this evening, I was hung up on the 573 and had totally overlooked 
the Toll-Free (8XX) option.  Then, I found a provider that offered 
Toll-Free DIDs and a little lightbulb began to sputter and spark (albiet 
quite dimly). 

3)  IAX2 Protocol:  Since this is Asterisk after all, it would be nice 
to use the native IAX protocol.  This isn't a *must have*, but makes 
things a little nicer to configure, and I think might also be necessary 
to have multiple channels on a single DID (not sure about that part though).


So as I have already hinted at, tonight I've finally found my "dream 
provider".  Their name is TelIAX, and they're out of Denver.  I was 
asking around on the #asterisk channel on irc.freenode.net about 
providers and got into a long chat with one of the partners in TelIAX.  
Turns out they have 8XX DIDs for very little additional cost and support 
IAX (as is obvious by their name).  They also are extremely willing to 
work with me on a billing plan, and while it's not pure pay-as-you-go 
it's not exactly metered.  So we'll work on things over the course of a 
few months to settle down on a usage amount and re-negotiate the bill as 
we go.  To start with, we're looking at 4000 minutes, 8 channels (i.e. 
lines), and two toll-free DIDs - all for $150/mo.  Not too shabby.  If 
we wind up using fewer/more minutes or channels it'll be adjusted to a 
fair schedule worked out in advance.  To top it all off, he's set me up 
with a week-long test period on a wide-open account that I can use and 
abuse for testing purposes.  That's what I call customer 
service...anyone need to call overseas? :P

Anyway, at this point it looks like we'll be using a combination of 
TelIAX, a dual-Xeon Dell rackmount server, and about a dozen Cisco 7960 
IP phones.  I'll keep you all up to date as the configuration and 
deployment progresses...  And if anyone wants me to hook them up with 
this TelIAX guy, I'd be happy to!

-N
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