VOIP service

I am planning on using Asterisk and a Digium 1TDM410PLF card for a home telephone system. I am confused about the FXO ports. Is this for voltage only? Or do I also need a telephone service? I am planning on using Broadvoice broadvoice.com/rateplans_byod.html for the SIP.

FXO ports are the places where you normally plug your pstn lines to be able to dialout to pstn or mobile numbers using pstn. But I don’t understand why you need FXO card because a good voip provider should free you from any such device and give you the option to dial any number SIP, Local/International PSTN or Local/International MOBILE. Check www.axvoice.com if you want to use your sip account for dialing any type of number.

Then would I be able to just use the Digium TDM410 card with one FXS module to use VOIP? I assume my calls would be sent over the internet with the connection I currently use?

I would suggest you buy and IP Phone and make a pure VoIP setup. This means IP Phone on one side, IP PBX (Asterisk) in the middle and VoIP provider on the other side.

It is usually the case with VoIP providers, that an internet connection is also used for telephony (SIP signalling and RTP for voice). There is tons of articles about this on the internet, so I think you will not have any issues finding the correct answer.

You don’t need any hardware board to use an a purely IP based Asterisk system. You don’t even need a physical IP phone although I’d definitely recommend that. But you could use a softphone for testing.