Asterisk VOIP Tips

One of the biggest things that VOIP has going for it is the fact that is costs way cheaper than traditional telephony and one of the main reasons for this low cost is the fact that VOIP services are not subject to the same taxes and charges that traditional telecommunications providers are. So what happens if VOIP providers become taxed? In Los Angeles, California, it seems that they are taking this route. Steve Stanek writes in Heartland:

Los Angeles voters have imposed a 9 percent tax on Internet phone calls, known as VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol). VoIP calls had been tax-free in the city. Voters also enacted a 1 percentage point reduction in the tax on all other phone calls, from 10 percent to 9 percent. Most phone calls are still made over traditional wireline or wireless phones, but Internet phone service is a rapidly growing segment of the telephone market.

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Perhaps the main attraction of VOIP services is the fact that making calls cost much less than traditional phone calls. Anyone who has tried calling overseas both using the traditional phone line and a VOIP line would know the considerable difference between the two and, in all probability, would stick to making VOIP calls. What some people might not know is the fact that there is a clear reason as to why VOIP calls are way cheaper than traditional telephone calls.

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For those who have not heard, Russell Shaw, one of the leading authorities in the VOIP world, passed away last March 14. He passed away in a hotel room in San Jose – what the reason was, remains unclear. According to a post at ZDNet, Russell’s girlfriend said “that Russell’s funeral will be a week from today (March 23) in Florida, but didn’t have much more detail than that at the moment. It’s also unclear what caused Russell’s death, but “he wasn’t feeling well at all Thursday night” and “he thought he could sleep it off.” We’ll pass along more details about the funeral home and other items as we get them.”

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Remember my friend I was talking about in the last post?  I mentioned something about his phone bill being in the thousands when he was still here in the US.  It was so bad that he even reached the point wherein he had to have his phone service cut off for a time.  Now that is what we call bad debt.

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VoIP has become a staple in the lives of the wired set, connecting friends, family and business partners who are continents apart. It has paved the way for business transactions to ensue and it has become indispensable to the lives of many.

Aside from instant messaging, VoIP is one of the key elements to business transactions. What you can’t say as clearly on instant messenger can be communicated excellently through a voice call.

But what makes a VoIP call a richer experience would be incorporating video in it: quite a lot of VoIP and instant messaging applications have now incorporated video in its communication services. Read the rest of this entry »

In any technology solution, the upfront cost, or the initial cost needed even when just want to initially test if the solution will work for your needs is one factor that many business clients consider in their evaluation and purchases. This is true for most solution stack, including PBX/VOIP Solutions.With the advantages and savings that open source solutions such as Asterisk offers, more and more companies feel the need to integrate Internet telephony in their infrastructure. Now, with the latest “offspring” of Digium’s purchase of Switchvox, small businesses can “test the waters” before spending the money on their PBX systems. Thanks to  Switchvox’s Free Edition. It lets potential customers to use the PBX software with zero upfront cost.

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I don’t know how I missed this, but I just came across an excellent Asterisk How-to guide on howtoforge.com, the excellent site that houses an increasing amount of guides of doing many things on Linux. The article is entitled “Installing the Asterisk PBX and The Asterisk Web-Based Provisioning GUI on Linux” and it provides a good step-by-step guide on getting started with Asterisk PBX on your favorite Linux distribution.

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