My Phone Network: More Adventures in Voice Over IP

I’ve been doing some additional work (aka play) with setting up a voice-over-IP network here in the office. I’ve now got Asterisk purring along smoothly, acting as the voicemail agent for all incoming calls. It’s working well with the Sipura SPA-2000, into which I’ve plugged a regular old Vista 150 desk phone.

Today I opened up a VoicePulse Connect! account, which lets me connect, through Asterisk and VoicePulse, to the PSTN, and to make long distance calls to anywhere in the US or Canada for just under 3 cents a minute.

I also purchased, for $7.99/month, a local DID number in Peterborough, New Hampshire. This lets people in the Peterborough local calling area phone a local number and get through to me. Other than the monthly fee, these incoming calls are free.

Setting up the VoicePulse Connect! account was extremely easy: the entire exercise, from start to having a number assigned to me, took less than 5 minutes. And my testing so far has resulted in excellent voice quality: Johnny phoned the DID number from Vancouver, my desk phone rang, and it sounded, well, like a telephone call should, with no pops, clicks, fade-outs, or digital interference. This despite the fact that I was sending a 1.1GB file over the same network at the same time.