Asterisk is
a Linux based telephone system which turns a server into a fully featured
PBX, with voicemail, analogue and digital lines and VOIP connectivity.For
the price of an average server and a small spend on on some telephony hardware,
you can have a fully fledged phone system. In fact you don’t really
need to buy any additional hardware, if you want to configure a pure VOIP
system. The phone system is the software, and extremely configurable.
Asterisk® is scalable from a single server to a muti-site muli-server solution with dediated servers for voicemail and call data recording. Each solution can be tailored for your needs.
Why use asterisk ?
Asterisk® telephone systems are extremely affordable when comapred against conventional telephone systems. When purchasing a conventional telephone system, you will likely find that a number of key features such as voicemail or Interactive voice prompts are optional extras. Where they are included, you will most lilely find that they are limited by the number of users which can be used.
In Asterisk®, you get everything straight out of the box. The limits that exist are imposed by the hardware that you deploy the solution on.
For a list of the functionality which asterisk can provide, please refer to the following link Asterisk Features
Asterisk Advantages:
- Runs on normal business grade servers
- Feature rich,no optional extras, limited only by hardware
- Extremely scalable, from domestic usage, to organisations with multi/international sites
- Supports mobile workers
- Extremely affordable
- Can be modified to include bespoke features
Trenchant Systems can provide you with an affordable solution based on your requirements. We are currently developing Asterisk packages based on general requirements. Contact our sales department for further information.
Example Usage
Here is an example deployment of Asterisk telephone system. In fact it is based on a solution installed within the office at Trenchant Systems.
The Office
A Compaq DL 360 server with a single TDM400P with 4 analogue lines and 10 DID numbers incoming over the internet.
This allowed the termination of 4 analouge PSTN lines and 10 incoming numbers which can support up to 5 concurrent calls on each number. A Business broadband connection was used to provision the incoming voip numbers over the internet.
Internally a mixture of IP phones were deployed with mobile workers using Software phones on laptops and headsets.
The dial plan is setup for the following features:
- Helpdesk call queuing with music on hold.
- Voicemail with email forwarding.
- Out of hours call forwarding , and technical support hunt groups
- Hosted conference calling.
- Interactive Voice Response menus
- VOIPTalk DID numbers
- Internal SIP hardphones
The home
Remote workers can connect directly to the office server to recieve and make business calls. However due to the affordabilty Asterisk can even be used in a domestic environment. This means that domestic calls and business calls are handled in a manner suitable to the comapny and also the inviduals domestic needs.
All business calls are routed via the office phone system, and domestic calls are handled by the local phone system.
In summary the dialplan configured allows the following features:
- Reduction of call costs by routing local & international calls to providers with minimum cost
- Inter phone system call routing of work related calls from home to office
- Management of anonymous callers, and authentication of anonymous callers
- Stop automated dialers used by sales companies from dialing your number.
Zapateller() - Option to record telephone calls to disc
- Call Database Records stored in a database
- Voicemail with email notification