Benefit of Asterisk

In my opinions, the only drawback of asterisk is that you need a really reliable network connection. Aside from that, maybe the price of the ipphone may be taken into consideration too since, the price is still higher compared to analog phone. But with the price, you get additional feature the analog phone doesn’t have, video conference, for example. Oh, and I forgot to mentioned that you will also need the skill to configure it.

Now, i’m here to talked about the benefit or advantage or the pro’s of an Asterisk system compared to analog or even digital PBX system, so let’s get to it.

Asterisk is a VoIP (Voice over IP) telephony system based on IP (Internet Protocol). Therefore, for long distance call you can have a very cheap communication channels. So the first advantage is the price you pay for communication is reduced. For corporate with distributed branches around the world, you can reduce voice communication cost significantly.

The next benefit of asterisk compared to traditional PBX system (analog or digital) is you have unlimited dial plan. With traditional PBX, maybe you have to press certain key(s) to be able to make a call. With asterisk you can directly press the destination number without the need to press certain key(s) beforehand. This is a true advantage over the traditional PBX system, especially when you have two or more PBX units involved.

In my own experience in the company where i’m working at, we have 3 separated sites with 3 PBX units and all of different series. So, call from site ‘A’ to site ‘B’ started with pressing some keys to get a line (lets say ‘88′). Call from site ‘A’ to site ‘C’ required pressing ‘30′. For the simplicity of users, the call from site C to site B should also be started with ‘30′, but on the contrary, since the PBX units involved is from different series, so they have different kind of policy programmed inside and we cannot just do that. We have to dial ‘40′. Can you imagine, for an international call, you need to enter different country code if you are dialling from different country? With asterisk, all I have to do is just programmed the extensions pattern in it, and then all users have to do to be able to make a call is to press the destination extensions directly without the need to know where they are.

Other pros of asterisk compared to traditional PBX (from the point of view of a technical perspective). Brief of another benefit are: unlimited dial plan, answering machine, voice mail that can forwarded to your email, Interactive Menu, and still much more.

You should bear in mind that this is open source software, so you have unlimited of choice to develop your own system.

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