Page 29 - Asterisk™: The Future of Telephony

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. 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. 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 flexibility or choice; they want you to be locked in to their
product cycles.

* Until now.
† To its credit, Nortel finally got rid of Windows NT 4.0 and installed Linux. Technically a good idea, but
rather odd, given that Nortel and Microsoft recently announced a partnership to develop enterprise telecom
applications together.

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