Skip to main content

SIPly GizmAsterisktic

When I first starting reading up on the E series I thought I saw some mention of the ability to use the E60 within the company PBX with support for 4 digit (extension) dialling.

It seemed to disappear from the blurb on the Nokia site but as Mobile Burn have confirmed it is there.

This is good news as now it opens up a realm of possibilities. If you are using a PBX with wireless support; something like Asterisk, then you can configure the SIP settings so that when you are within range of the WAP your shiny new E60 can be used as your normal deskphone.

Impressive but so what? Asterisk 2.0 also supports Gizmo a SIP Softphone VoIP client similar to Vonage and Skype.



This now allows me to route calls from Gizmo to me mobile handset. That's pretty useful if you're on Gizmo which is very US centric but does support Call In in the UK and Spain. It comes with the usual Call Out and Gizmo->Gizmo free calls.

All very nice and relatively easy to do. Asterisk runs on Linux and so the whole platform supports the growing trend in OpenSource adoption in the SME market.

The final step in the chain is something that many people have talked about already. Using your WiFi router to host some of this stuff. I use Belkin at home and I'm very happy with it, I piggy back onto the ADSL modem so I can have an always on connection wherever I am in the house. Belkin is a supported provider in the openWRT forum
OpenWrt is a Linux distribution for wireless routers. Instead of trying to cram every possible feature into one firmware, OpenWrt provides only a minimal firmware with support for add-on packages. For users this means the ability to custom tune features, removing unwanted packages to make room for other packages and for developers this means being able to focus on packages without having to test and release an entire firmware.

So I can now change my firmware and run the a Linux distro on my router to host Asterisk*

The total solution is ideal for SME's as I get a very cost effective PBX for my business that can scale nicely if I build out the connectivity by adding some access points as well.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

In the overlap of technology, marketing and social media the QR Code is critical

Outside of consulting on telecommunications, CIO advisory, and the business adoption of technology I also completed an MBA.  One of the projects was on the potential use cases of two dimensional barcodes. Today the QR Code , one of many types of 2D codes, is seen as being a critical component of any good marketing plan.  As a natural integration between social media and devices I would extend VMob Bob's question " What can a mobile operator learn from Facebook ?" and also ask how can they step and start to make innovations with the extensions to social media that already exist today?

Access as infrastructure, what does this mean for Telco 2.0?

Having recently attended a seminar by Catherine Middleton from Ryerson on Australia's NBN initiative it got me thinking about "access as infrastructure". The Australian Government is investing $B's of public and private capital in a national broadband network that is a fibre to the premise platform, although for distant and remote sites it will most likely be a fixed wireless solution.  The proposition from Dr. Middleton is that ubiquitous access will create a platform for services that separates competition from access, sounds like Telco 2.0. The question I posed was if the idea is a common platform but close to 10% of that access will be at 12Mbps rather than 100Mbps (fixed wireless versus fibre) then surely the lowest common denominator will prevail and services will be designed for 12Mbps.  You would then question the rationale of FTTP or FTTH when you could go fixed wireless.  Over time LTE and similar technologies will see an increase in speed that will of...

A Phone or a Swiss Army Knife?

It's getting to that time when I should start looking for my new handset. I choose the word carefully as today you are very lucky to find just a phone. Most handsets today are either a phone and media player, a phone and a camera (sometimes video), a phone and a PDA the list of combinations goes on and on. Now this might be great in the marketing room "what can we do next?" but the point that is lost on many of the manufacturers is this; people want a phone first the rest is secondary. Many of the hybrid handsets look good, can have great MP3 playback but suffer in size, ease of use of the main function (phone calls) or have poor battery life because of all the other gadgets hanging off of it. It's very similar to the Swiss Army Knife, the knife is often too small to be used for much over opening your letters, the screwdriver is hard to use because the size of the body means you can't get to a lot of the screws on objects, the pliers have little leverage because t...