We have recently configured an Asterisk PBX and given that we’re delighted with our recent acquisition and install, I just wanted to share what we’re using and how we got here.
At first we bought a PC with one telephony card to connect Asterisk directly to “real” phone lines. The problem is that, even if our 10 Mbps ADSL Internet connection is quite good, phone lines are pretty bad in Sabadell, specially in our building. So after fighting with Movistar (our phone provider) who lied to us with what could be done with our lines, we decided to unsubscribe almost all services and only keep a single line. The one with the ADSL connection.
We also decided to drop our dependency on large corporations and go for smaller companies that could provide us a VoIP connection so we didn’t have to manage the connection from Asterisk to “real” phone lines. After testing several providers we decided to use http://www.adamvozip.es services. Thanks to 1 vNum service we now have a regional telephone 93 553 18 03 which is better than a 902 (not regional) number because most people do not have an extra cost if they phone to regional numbers thanks to a flat fee most telecomunication providers offer in Spain. For that number, we contracted two more vLines, so we can receive up to 3 phone calls at the same time. What is really great about this is that vLine and vNum costs are smaller than original Movistar prices for real lines. Each Movistar line is about 13 Eur/month per line whereas 1 vNum is 8 Eur/month and each extra line is only 6 Eur/month! Another advantage is that, if needed, we can contract new lines and we will have them available in only one or two hours (in hour experience) instead of waiting several days for a real phone line.
For outgoing phone calls we use the only Movistar line we have (the ADSL one), because of the flat fee for calls done with that line and if the line is busy Asterisk automatically does a VoIP call through http://www.altecom.cat services, simply because they have lower per-minute prices than adamvozip. This means we can have up to 10 outgoing calls with no extra cost per line (we only pay per minute).
Apart from this infrastructure, we have also configured Asterisk to be able to receive VoIP calls through our SIP address nan-tic@ekiga.net and we may buy one or two licenses to receive and send skype calls through http://www.digium.com/en/products/software/skypeforasterisk.php
The only missing step to make the system simply perfect for our needs was, of course, OpenERP integration. Fortunately, Akretion and Anevia had already worked on that so we just picked their asterisk_click2dial http://bit.ly/f44XES module, tuned it to our needs and now we can dial with a single mouse click from OpenERP contacts!
