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One of the great things about our new Asterisk computer based PBX system is it can use industry standard SIP connections to connect to extensions and other services.

Inside our office this means we can buy any SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) compliant handset and that will work as a telephone extension over our network (one cable to your desk for computer and your phone)

Another neat thing that this means is that we can use SIP compliant VoIP providers (Voice over IP providers who work something like Skype) for extra telephone trunks to handle our calls. For the non technical this means we can use the Internet to connect to a Skype-type service and they will make the local call for us and patch us through. It’s essentially like hooking Skype up to your PBX and it is transparent to the user.

The cost for NZ calls is about 6-10c a minute (greater than 4c per minute on a normal landline) but of course there is no base rental and you only pay for what you use.

Conditions apply as always. Telecom’s crippling of ADSL (mostly by lack of investment but regularly by design) will be an issue from time to time. You will also need to be with an ISP that properly provisions international bandwidth as the phone call is going over the Internet to the US/Europe before it gets to a telephone line. Skype themselves don’t support SIP (they have decided to only use their own propriety protocol) but there are plenty of similar services that do.