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February 23, 2009
Asterisk fine-tuning
The Bleeding Edge spouse's practice, Victoria Avenue Psychology, was set up from the outset with VoIP, to try to keep communications costs to a minimum. Initially we used a hosted PBX solution from Mytel, but as the number of psychologists using the centre increased, we moved to a TrixBox Asterisk installation.
Our main VoIP providers are Freshtel and GoTalk, which are cheaper than Mytel's. When people occasionally suggest to Bleeding Edge that surely businesses ought to use PSTN rather than VoIP because they're more reliable, we explain that the incoming Telstra line was down for a week last year, and the only reason Victoria Avenue Psychology continued to function was that the VoIP lines remained solid as a rock. In close to 18 months of operations, we haven't had any interruptions to the VoIP service.
TrixBox hasn't missed a beat. It's gone down twice, when faulty electric wiring caused a couple of black-outs, but each time it's re-booted without a problem. We have to thank Nathan Pinskier and his son Samuel for setting up, and for doing the occasional reconfiguration, but we're slowly becoming familiar with the system, and doing our own maintenance.
We're about to add another Snom 320 phone to the system, and just today we've set it up to handle all the voicemail, rather than relying on Telstra's service. That means that we'll be able to reduce our monthly charges, however minimally, yet again. In the current economic client, Asterisk is even more essential for small business.
Posted by cw at February 23, 2009 01:41 PM
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