Virtual Office - Am I in the right direction?

Asterisk Asterisk General
1

Hi All,

I am new to VOIP and I am starting at the machine after a long day reading about DID’s, channels, inbound, outbound and incoming calls and at this point, it seems like I’ve learned nothing at all. I got myself a simple pc, plugged it to the network, downloaded Asterix Now and I assumes I am ready to go. Or so I thought.

I would appreciate any help you can offer with that regards.
The plan is:

  1. I have 2 people is the Philippines working with me. 2 in India, 3 in the UK and 5 in the US. All of us are working from home.
  2. Myself and another guy have an IP Phone (Snom 360) and we want to be able to communicate with each other (even a conference between some of us) and allow everyone to call outside from the soft-phone to a PSTN and Mobile numbers in the US and the UK to speak to our clients etc.

How do you envisage the system to look like?
How many DID’s we actually need? There would not be more that 3 people calling outside at the same time. (However we want to be able to have a conference of 8 people at a time internality)
Do we need to register a DID per country? The two people in the Philippines will call only the US and UK and would have a soft-phone that is really an extension.

I hope this make sense…

Thanks

Ben :

2

Hi Ben,

As you are having a PC that will host the Server (AsteriskNOW), the others
could register their Soft / Hard phones with that and talk unlimited within
the group. Hence conferencing would not be an issue between you. For this,
you need to have a public IP (but others need not). DID may not be needed
if its going to be all outgoing calls.

You may need a 4 port FXO card to dial out thru analog lines. If you need
3 simultaneous calls, go for 3 analog lines. Am not sure of the cost factor.

If you place the server in phil, the guys from US and UK are going to call
your Asterisk box, then dial US / UK which would be international calling.

Going VOIP is an alternate option. Find the best VOIP provider in your area.

Choose the best place to host your server or have different servers all over
and inter-connect them.

Cheers
Sharma