[thelist] VOIP / Project Question

Chris H chris123 at magma.ca
Thu Jan 20 15:43:35 CST 2005


Jeff Wilhelm wrote:

>This is a little off-topic, but I need some feedback, so I hope nobody
>minds. It's more on-topic than most of our Friday conversations, so here it
>goes:
>
>OK, so I'm sitting here working and the president of the company calls me
>and needs a solution within a week to this. As he's talking I'm thinking
>"this isn't hard at all," but then we get to the kicker.
>
>So he wants me to buy four laptops, and get VOIP service for each one. You
>know, like Vonage's soft-phone for example, so calls can be placed from the
>laptop and auto-dialing can be done on the desktop, and all that. Not so
>hard. I have Vonage at home, and while I have never used the soft-phone, it
>sounds doable. Then he tells me that the four laptops are going to be
>shipped to Kosovo and the calls will be placed to / from there.
>
>So I have a few questions:
> - Will the laptops work overseas or will I need special plugs?
> - Will VOIP work? I think it should, although the latency may be bad.
> - Is there any way to get JUST the SoftPhone from Vonage? I called and they
>couldn't answer that for me. I know you can order the regular service (comes
>with an ATA for home use) and then get the SoftPhone as an add-on, but that
>only gives you 500-minutes per month of SoftPhone usage.
> - Anyone have any other feedback?
>
>Thanks a lot,
>Jeff
>
>  
>
There are a number of "free" softphones available on various platforms. 
Also consider running an asterisk server on linux with a dedicated IP 
and properly firewalled. In that manner, as long as the laptops can get 
access to the net, the dial home to the server from where the call can 
be routed anywhere including copper lines in the office or cell phones..:)

ref:
http://asterisk.org
http://www.voip-info.org/tiki-index.php  main ref for all things VOIP

there are many contractors who can set this up for you in less then a 
day and at a reasonable rate. If you are new to this, pay first, learn 
later. Keep the boss happy and you in good standing.

regards, hth's

/ch





More information about the thelist mailing list