SIP providers, VOIP phones, and Linux (UPDATE)

[Tyler Aviss]

On Sat, May 9, 2009 at 6:56 PM, Tyler Aviss <tjaviss-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> My girlfriend does a fair bit of long-distance and international
> long-distance calling. We've actually moved out of Toronto so some of
> the cheaper VOIP providers aren't necessarily available, but I was
> thinking that it might make more sense just to pick up a standalone
> wifi/VOIP phone and do things myself.
>
> However, I'm not really sure about where to get started on it all.
> I've got a lower-consumption 'nix server that runs pretty much
> constantly which could handle the software angle of things, but what
> would I do to get connected with a dialout # and, further to that, how
> would I then tie that into a VOIP phone (or heck, even do it with the
> VOIP phone and not needing the server).
>
>
> Any ideas/suggestions?
>
>
> - TJA
>
> --
> Tyler Aviss
> Systems Support
> LPIC/LPIC-2
> (778) 890-0942
> --
> The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
> TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
> How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists
>



Just an update on this. I'm currently trying out service with
voicemeup.com. I signed up on Saturday evening, put $20 into the
account, and had service when I checked it around noon on Sunday.

After futzing around with Asterisk a bit, and then later with Ekiga
some more, it looks like things are actually working quite nicely.
Since I've moved to what's essentially middle-of-nowhere-BC now, I
can't get a local DID, but I've set the caller ID to my cellular # and
rates about $0.017 or so a minute (Canada or China) without having to
deal with a monthly contract just yet. For $35 I could get an 800
number and 2500 minutes/month, which is somewhat tempting but I'll
hold off on that until I've tried the whole thing out for awhile :-)

It seems they're actually doing themselves a disservice with their
rates table, since the actual rates were recently cut by around 20%
for most destinations, but here's the list:

http://www.voicemeup.com/rates.html


Next project is to dig around some old boxes, find the long-since
abandoned "yealink" USB->POTS adapter that I once had a hair-pulling
experience trying to make work with Skype, and see if I can get the
thing to work a little more nicely with Asterisk :-)

- TJA
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists