Re: Information on VoIP / Asterisk

["Patrick Lidstone" <patrick@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Are there any VoIP service providers that provide a 'benifit' to
going the Asterisk route, cheap or free calls, again UK based
services ?


I've had positive experiences with telappliant
(http://www.voiptalk.org/) wrt UK
provision.

As Chris says, UK POTS line performance is less than stellar, and
does frequently have echo problems. ISDN with the appropriate drivers
is phenomenal, however. Hardphones are essential - but the likes of
solwise and ebuyer sell perfectly respectable hardware at a
reasonable price. Softphones give a good idea of what the technology
can achieve, but the lack of hardware echo cancellation/ full duplex
audio (depending on soundcard/softphone) makes for a poor quality
call when compared to a hardphone. For domestic use, asterisk is
ideal; I personally would hesitate to deploy it in a commercial
environment until such a time as it was possible to do a seamless
failover between two asterisk boxes; this is simply down to hardware
considerations, and is not casting aspersions on asterisk in any
shape or form - as ever, YMMV.

Patrick