The introduction of open source telephony system Asterisk to SA has given small Linux developers an "in" into the telecommunications arena, says Rob Lith, co-founder of importer Connection Telecom.
"Local Linux developers, very often small companies, have always been excluded from participating in the telecommunications market. This is due to Telkom`s monopoly that effectively excludes competition and, secondly, because proprietary switchboard vendors find ways of locking in their clients," Lith says.
However, despite these obstacles, Lith says, the open source system developed by US-based company Digium, is growing in popularity with local users who see it as a more cost-effective solution to the traditional suppliers.
"A low-end analogue Digium card with a single port costs about R3 700 and the higher-end digital card, with multiple ports, costs the end-user R18 000. A single port proprietary card can easily cost between R40 000 to R50 000 per card," Lith says.
Lith`s comments come on the back of the announcement that Digium had received $13.8 million (about R84 million) from a US venture capital company Matrix.
The latest version is Asterisk 1.2 and Lith says he expects v1.4 to be released within the next month. "While the current versions were developed by Digium, the newer version has a lot of community features, with Digium acting in an overseer role. This has brought down the cost of development for this kind of system dramatically."
According to Lith, the adoption of the Asterisk system has been exponential over the past four years since his company has been importing the cards.
"Just from the sale of the basic cards there are now more than 1 080 lines into the public switched telephone network. Plus there are a number of larger installations such as call centres," he says.
Share