Re: [school-discuss] Voice over IP for schools

[Daniel Howard <dhhoward@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

James P. Kinney III wrote:
> On Wed, 2006-09-20 at 12:07 -0400, Daniel Howard wrote:
> > Folks, we may get to experiment with VOIP at Brandon sooner than I 
> > thought!  Here's what I was thinking: we want to be able to do local 
> > calls to all student homes, some of which don't have PCs and/or 
> > broadband, so that rules out Skype or the open source stuff I think. 
>
> Not exactly. There is Skype-out which lets skype call normal POTS lines.

Yabbut it gets complicated.  Right now, Skype to landline calls are 
free, but only till the end of the year, then they start charging who 
knows how much.  Plus, to get Skype-in and voice mail (so parents can 
call and leave messages for individual teachers), costs another $38+$20 
per year per number and voice mail.  I'd like a solution that gives 
teachers what most of us take for granted in our workplace: a unique 
extension, voicemail, and free (for them) long distance.  That's why I 
was thinking of Vonage/Cable VOIP and the Asterisk PBX.

Daniel

--
Daniel Howard
President and CEO
Georgia Open Source Education Foundation