I’ve taken the plunge and ordered two hardphones for a VOIP test with Asterisk OSS PBX. I’ve ordered two Sipura SPA-841’s from Atacomm after extensive conversations with folks on the Asterisk IRC channel. The phones won’t be in for a week or so as they have just been released, but initial information is very encouraging.

I also put down $5.00 with VoipJet as a IAX termination service (PBX speak for outbound provider). The $5.00 gets us about 380minutes of US talktime, which should be enough for a good test.

Once I get the devices and have them configured, I’ll be sending them to my partners for testing and we’ll see how this VOIP/Virtual office is going to work for us.

I’ve read Asterisk before, but really didn’t see where it would play with my requirements. Well, now I do. With our small business and with our home offices it looks like Asterisk or IAX/SIP provider might be exactly what we need. The way I see it now, there are a couple of options that would work for us, after we each get a SIP phone:

• Go out and find a provider (Packet8) who will handle our current number and be able to add virtual numbers. This has a monthly rate attached to it in the rage of $20-$40/mo per line. They also charge for other features on a monthly basis. So we are looking at around $200/mo for 4 of us. That might or might not include long distance.
• Build a Asterisk machine myself and put a two port card (I think that’s a FXO) so we can have a single inbound line and a single outbound line for local calls. This would give us complete control of the the PBX, but we’d need an upstream provider to handle our long distance and to route ‘virtual numbers’ to us. I’m not sure how you go about doing that right now.
• Just do Vonage, they supply the Phone to SIP converter and all that jazz, not sure what price advantage or service advantage we would see from vonage.

I’ll keep looking and thinking on this subject, as it sure would be nice to have easy dialing between us, even with a soft SIP phone.