New small office (UK)

Asterisk Asterisk General
1

We are just about to move into a new office and I would really like to use asterisk as our phone system (never used Asterisk before).

What would you recommend as a setup given these conditions?

Location: UK
Broadband: 4Mb down - 400kb up
Possibly new provider: 10Mb down - 1Mb up
Around 12 people in the office
Rarely more than 3 people on the phone at any one time.
2 outgoing calls at one time would be sufficient (3 handy 3% of the time).

I would really like (but not vital) all the outgoing calls to show up as coming from our incoming number. Is it possible to spoof the number or us a VOIP provider.

Other than the project secretary the rest of us are rarely on the phone so a PC based interface would be convenient.

Any suggestions, recommendations or pointers are greatly appreciated.

Thank you,

The designated office IT guy.

2

You would need a carrier in the UK that would allow you to spoof your caller ID. I am not sure about the laws in the UK regarding spoofing calls. I have a carrier in the UK that may be able to spoof calls for you. PM me for details on them.

You may want to get a internet connection for your Asterisk server. if you have proper QoS it should work well but I have seen routers screw it up.

I use soft phones as well as hard phones (aka regular phones). At the end of the day you end up having more issues with soft phones. I normally set up customers with two separate IP networks. One for the phones and one for their computer network. While this defeats one of the big advantages of VoIP it helps solve a lot of other issues that may come up.