Asterisk for Taxi firm in Australia

Hi

I am about to pitch to a small taxi firm in Australia for a total system revamp. I want to use Elastix as their call system. They are in the country not city, and service about 7 cars when busy.

One issue is that during busy times (Weekends) all calls go to the owners house and he routes the jobs to the cars via CB radio, the rest of the time, when he isnt at home, all calls route to the cars and are picked up by the drivers themselves. Currently this is over CB radio and doesnt work very well. All drivers hear all phone calls, and for the caller it is difficult to communicate through a phone and cb radio.

ideally I want to host the asterisk system on a VPS in a host data centre, not at the owners house for fail safe reasons. but I can look at either method. And I want to suggest using iphones, ipads or some kind of device like them in the cars. this will be for the call dispatch system as well. I have tested Bria on iphone with Asterisk, but I have reservations. Does anyone know of a system of this nature working well anywhere?

I have two big questions (thousands actually, but two for now relating to Asterisk)

Firstly, how can I connect a VPS based Asterisk system to the analog PSTN line in the managers house. do I need a second computer with PSTN connection and asterisk loaded to literally route straight over the internet to the VPS asterisk box.

and does anyone have any cunning suggestions for ways to look at this scenario and add in failsafe measures for days when the ISP goes down, which it does in residential country locations in Australia sometimes for a couple of days unfortunately

I would really like to connect with anyone who has experience of Asterisk and Taxi companies esp in Australia but elsewhere also.

please mail me mark@mbitservices.com.au

rgds
Mark

My gut feeling is that this needs a lot more analysis. You’ve already mentioned the reduction in resilience compared with direct access to the air.

Another thing to consider is safety. You are going to need to operate this totally hands free in the car. There is much better support for that with traditional PMR or cellular phones, than with IP phones.

My biggest concern with the current system would be privacy. No analogue radio system is really secure, but the legislative restrictions on eavesdropping CB will be few or none. Also uncontrolled calls from the public will be heard by the other customers.