Asterisk: The Future of Telephony, 2nd Edition

Chapter 1. A Telephony Revolution

It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds.

—Samuel Adams

An incredible revolution is under way. It has been a long time in coming, but now that it has started, there will be no stopping it. It is taking place in an area of technology that has lapsed embarrassingly far behind every other industry that calls itself high-tech. The industry is telecommunications, and the revolution is being fueled by an open source Private Branch eXchange (PBX) called Asterisk™.

Telecommunications is arguably the last major electronics industry that has remained untouched by the open source revolution.^[3] Major telecommunications manufacturers still build ridiculously expensive, incompatible systems, running complicated, ancient code on impressively engineered yet obsolete hardware.

As an example, Nortel’s Business Communications Manager kludges together a 15 year-old Key Telephone Switch and a 1.2 GHz Celeron PC.^[4] All this can be yours for between $5,000 and $15,000, not including telephones. If you want it to actually do anything interesting, you’ll have to pay extra licensing fees for closed, limited-functionality, shrink-wrapped applications. Customization? Forget it—it’s not in the plan. Future technology and standards compliance? Give them a year or two—they’re working on it.

All of the major telecommunications manufacturers offer similar-minded products. They don’t want you to have ...