At least, that's the word from this morning's Wall Street Journal. The soon-to-be Murdoch-ized paper also said that Google is testing an "advanced wireless network" at its campus in Mountain View, California, just in case it decides to operate the spectrum on its own."
Programming the Asterisk open source PBX via the Asterisk Gateway Interface (AGI) is a fun but exasperating exercise for the telephony programmer. It is fun since it can make a telephone dance, but frustrating because errors and debugging information can be difficult to catch since status information arrives on multiple channels: audible, Asterisk console, and STDERR. You can make the process of debugging a bit easier with the assistance of PHPAGI and Festival.
Sangoma produces telephony cards and writes drivers that work with open source applications such as Asterisk, Yate, FreeSwitch, and CallWeaver. Sangoma CEO and founder David Mandelstam says that before Sangoma started producing cards to work with Asterisk, the open source project was "kind of a toy for hobbyists."
Like many VoIP telephony companies, Junction Networks uses Asterisk and other open source software to provide its customers with highly customizable VoIP service. Junction has been able to migrate its business model from a conference bridge service provider to a full-fledged telephone services company largely because of the flexibility and lower capital requirements of open source. "We're a completely bootstrapped company," says Mike Oeth, founder and CEO. "We were never locked into a business plan that was sold to investors." He says Junction is successful because it has been able to follow its customers' desires with open source.
Thanks to Linux kernel updates and newly added drivers, wireless broadband access is now easy to set up on laptops. However, some vendors, such as Verizon, don't support broadband PCMCIA adapters. A script can help, but trying to edit a script can be difficult for entry-level users, and Internet service providers (ISP) often provide little information that can help. Enter openSUSE's YaST, a graphical program that can help users configure their laptops to use wireless broadband PC Cards and other types of modems to connect to a network.
Marc Fribush, a former "Microsoft guy," is a telecommunications industry entrepreneur who discovered the benefits of open source when he launched a turnkey SAAS telephony business based on Asterisk. "It's really powerful stuff," Fribush says.
Thomas Howe is a telecommunications developer and consultant who is passionate about the role of open source software in the telephony industry. He calls open source the "next generation" of telecommunications, and works with large enterprise companies to help them design phone systems that fully integrate with their business flow. "Only open source can do that," Howe says.