Asterisk

Asterisk turns your computer into a telephone exchange. Asterisk is a powerful and popular telephone exchange development tool-kit and AsteriskNOW is the ready made, ready to install version. Asterisk is free and open source.

Download AsteriskNOW from www.asterisk.org to get started. All you need is an old computer to run AsteriskNOW and telephone or VoIP connections. AsteriskNOW is based on Linux and will run on any computer that works with Linux. You might already have old computers running Ubuntu Linux and know what to expect with Linux.

PBX

You need some telephone connections to build a telephone exchange or PBX. The telephone connections can be conventional telephones or VoIP, Voice over IP (Ethernet).

There are hardware boxes to convert telephone lines to digital formats. You can also get cards that plug into your computer but think about the higher voltages in telephone lines plus lightening striking telephone lines. Choose an external box to protect your computer. When you want to connect a lot of lines, the telephone company will run cable or fibre into your premises and supply a conversion box. Fibre does not conduct lightening strikes.

You can connect internal telephones to the Asterisk box through converters plus use digital headsets and VoIP through your network. The outgoing calls can be through VoIP plus conventional telephone lines. Asterisk can direct calls through the lowest cost route and can connect to other Asterisk exchanges to further cut costs. Using an example in Australia, you could have an office in Sydney, another in Melbourne, and put an Asterisk exchange in each. A call from Sydney to Adelaide might go through the exchange in Sydney then VoIP to Melbourne then out to the regular telephone network.

Gateway

Asterisk connects through VoIP using many protocols including those for voicemail and other applications. Asterisk becomes the gateway from your telephone connections to anything digital.

Voicemail

Asterisk has an integrated voicemail application. After you get Asterisk running for voice calls, you can switch from external voicemail systems to the Asterisk application. You will need a good backup system for the Asterisk server to prevent loss of recorded messages from a hardware failure.

Conference calls

Asterisk has a conference bridge application named MeetMe. You have to perform some configuration work. I do not know what is prebuilt in AsteriskNOW.

Voice response

Asterisk connects to IVR (Interactive Voice Response) systems and can share data with them.

Call centres

Automatic Call Distributors, ACDs, automatically distribute calls in call centres. The is an ACD application in Asterisk.

Music on hold

The most hated part of telephone systems. Asterisk can feed MP3 files to your customers while they are on hold. Just promise me you will not choose Celine Dion.

Conclusion

Find an old computer. Learn a little bit about Linux using Ubuntu. Read the Asterisk documentation, www.asterisk.org/docs. Download AsteriskNOW. Experiment with VoIP connections. You are on your way to a lower cost telephone service.