The Michigan Telephone blog

From Cynthia Brumfield at IP & Democracy comes this bit of information:

Continuing with its tight string of hearings on telecom reform, the Senate Commerce Committee will hold a hearing tomorrow on the topic of Universal Service Fund Contributions. Universal service is a hotly debated, intensely important telecom policy topic but the complex and broken methods for calculating universal service contributions and distributions are really, really boring.

Still, for those of us who have time on our hands, tomorrow’s hearing will feature the following witnesses:

Glen Post, CEO, Century/Tel

Tom Simmons, Vice President of Public Policy, Midcontinent Communications

Trent Boaldin, President, Epic Touch Co.

Bonnie Cramer, Member, AARP Board of Directors

Paul Garnett, Asst. Vice President Regulatory Affairs, CTIA

Load up on the No-Doz and watch the hearings live on C-SPAN 3, www.c-span.org or on the Senate Commerce Committee’s own web site. (Thanks as always to Peter Kiley.)

My bet is that of all the folks who appear at this dog-and-pony show, none of them will advocate the only truly fair solution: Abolish this corporate welfare program! I would be very pleasantly surprised to be proven wrong on this. It’s almost certain that CenturyTel, as one of the prime recipients of USF disbursements, will argue for the continuation and expansion of this taking from telephone customers, but groups that should be arguing on behalf of consumers (like the AARP) will likely argue about collection methodology instead of using their voice to call for an end to the USF (one reason I will almost certainly never join the AARP is because every time I see them taking a position on something, they either take entirely the wrong side, or else they wimp out and are willing to settle for the proverbial “half a loaf”).

Technorati Tags: USF, legislation, government, senate, USF, telecommunications, telephone, MichiganTelephone

I wish to yield the floor today to Timothy Karr of mediacitizen, who is sounding the alarm on the possible death of network neutrality. The big phone companies are making a last ditch, take-no-prisoners effort to regain monopoly control (or at least, impose monopoly-style pricing) of telecommunications, including the Internet, and it appears that our legislators are once again willing to prostitute themselves out to the big corporate interests. I will just say this much: Any legislator (and I’m especially looking at the Republicans here) that comes to you talking about “family values” and “moral principles”, but who is taking money from the big phone companies and altering their vote in response, is one of the world’s biggest hypocrites, and they have one hell of a lot of nerve asking for your vote. Such legislators are despicable in my book. Don’t think I’m giving the Democrats a free pass on this, they are just as bad when they take these bribes contributions, but at least they aren’t usually campaigning on some hypocritical morality platform. In my book, if you want to campaign on morality you had doggone well better be a moral person, and that includes not taking bribes (excuse me, “campaign contributions”) from big corporations to shaft the American people!

Enough of my venting, here’s what Timothy Karr had to say:

Network Neutrality: Dead on Arrival?

Network neutrality, a principle that ensures the free flow of ideas online, appears dead on arrival in Washington as big media once again wield influence over our elected politicians.

The numbers tell the story. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, AT&T and other telephone and cable companies are among the top contributors to the re-election campaigns of a number of house Telecommunications Subcommittee members, including Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.), who has received more than $12,000 from AT&T executives, employees and their family members. Comcast associates tipped in an additional $10,000 equaling Upton’s contribution from the National Cable and Telecommunications Association (NCTA).

And hands aren’t clean on the other side of the aisle either. AT&T Comcast and NCTA have tipped more than $100,000 into the campaign war chests of Telecommunications Subcommittee Democrats as well.

The corporate largesse is paying dividends. Sources inside the House of Representatives revealed earlier this week that all language pertaining to network neutrality has been struck by subcommittee from the latest draft of the Telecom Act.

According to the National Journal, the Telecommunications Subcommittee is likely to drop all references after lawmakers failed to reach consensus on the issue. If the Journal report is correct, the DC bottleneck is the net result of the full-tilt lobbying by AT&T, Comcast, BellSouth and Verizon.

In addition to the money spent to fill campaign coffers, they have funneled tens of millions of dollars to lobbying efforts, industry friendly think tanks and political junkets, waving a strong hand over all sectors of the political process — at the local, state and federal levels.

By lining their pockets with telco dollars, certain lawmakers have opted to turn their backs on network neutrality and abandoned their posts as guardians of our public commons. They’ve decided that committing a crime of omission is better than standing up to the corporate powers that be.

A Telecom Act without network neutrality would hasten the Internet’s demise — effectively ridding our online experience of the governing principle that until now fostered the free flow of ideas and made the Web a beacon for democratic ideas and business innovation.

A Telecom Act without an enforceable rulebook would leave this democratic medium to the whims of predatory telephone and cable companies. The stage is now set for these conglomerates to play gatekeepers to all online content and services — turning our net freedoms into their net revenues.

If the nation’s largest ISPs are allowed to discriminate against the flow of web traffic, The New York Times editorial board wrote on Sunday, “the Internet providers, rather than consumers, could become the driving force in how the Internet evolves.”

The profit motive of a few corporations would supplant the freedoms of all users, determining which innovations end up shaping our digital future. The threat is real. These companies could block us from viewing a favorite podcast or blog, cut off net phones unless we use the company service, or force us to download MP3s from their company store while slowing access to other music sites.

AT&T, Bell South, Comcast and Verizon make massive campaign contributions. They’re used to getting their way in the halls of Congress. And they don’t want network neutrality to stop them from getting their way online.

Only a public outcry can restore this founding principle, before it becomes a footnote in the history of the Internet’s fall.

It’s time Americans who feel strongly about an open and free Internet told our elected representatives to reverse course. Net neutrality is an issue where the public’s interest cannot be outflanked by massive telcos and their well-oiled politicians.
Originally posted by Timothy Karr on mediacitizen at 11:37 AM

Technorati Tags: net neutrality, legislation, government, telecommunications, broadband, Internet, telephone, MichiganTelephone

Did you hear the one about the University in Canada where the president has banned Wi-Fi on campus? Blogger Preston Gralla writes,

Think the politically correct thinking on campus has gone too far? How about this one: The president of Canada’s Lakeland University has banned Wi-Fi on campus, because he claims it may have “fairly significant” health risks.

It’s good that Lakeland President Fred Gilbert has the health of the students in mind, but science doesn’t seem to be his strong suit. We already swim in a sea of electric and magnetic fields. Cell phone transmissions, radio transmissions, TV transmissions…it’s all around us. And there’s no evidence that Wi-Fi presents a danger.

Hey, I’ve got an idea, maybe Mr. Gilbert should start his own sect. Starting now, they can be the ones living in the past. Why let the Amish have all the fun? (See previous item, below).

Seriously, folks, I’d be a LOT more worried about the possible damage from having a cell phone glued two inches from ones’ brain for extended periods than I would ever be about having a wi-fi unit (or even several) nearby. Anyway, I wonder how many students and potential students will decide not to apply to this university (or will transfer out) because of this.

Also, I wonder if that university has a campus radio or TV station?

Technorati Tags: University, college, Canada, wi-fi, wireless, oddball, MichiganTelephone

From The Northwestern in Oshkosh, Wisconsin comes this strange tale of an Amish teenager who tapped his (obviously non-Amish) neighbors’ telephone line, running it to a shed on his property where he had a phone stashed. He had been using this phone to call a relative down in Indiana (presumably also non-Amish, or else he had a home business that required a phone), and the teenager “claimed he did not know the neighbor would be charged for the calls, according to court documents.”

Now wait a minute – he know how to connect up a telephone (presumably burying a cable between his neighbor’s house and his shed) but had never heard of toll charges for making phone calls? Give me a break – unless the Amish have secretly been using VoIP for the last several years, even they know that long distance calls cost money.

It’s a funny story but in a way it’s a sad one too. In today’s world, most teenagers whose parents refused to have a phone would just go get a prepaid cell phone and hide it somewhere. I came across a web site a few years ago that talked about the child abuse (and we are talking the worst type of abuse, especially against female children, but sometimes male children also) that goes on in some Amish communities (mostly in the eastern U.S. if I recall correctly), with the full knowledge of almost everyone in the community and sometimes even members of local law enforcement. After reading that I’ve never quite had the same impression of the Amish, even though I realize that was probably a very extreme situation not common to all Amish communities, or even to all Amish families within those communities. Still, I have to wonder what kind of life this teenager had, that would cause him to resort to such an unusual tactic to have communications with the “outside world.” I’m not condoning the theft, but just wondering about the circumstances that led up to it. I’m not saying he was abused or anything like that, but perhaps very lonely?

By the way, it would be interesting to know how many Amish have cell phones but don’t tell their neighbors (maybe using a hand-cranked or solar powered generator to keep the batteries charged).

There’s an Amish family sort of near where I live that specializes in making what they call “mini-barns”, actually small storage sheds, but very well constructed. The funny part is that they feel they’re not allowed to have electricity, but they do have a telephone, plus propane powered air compressors to run their air-driven nailers and such. I have wondered why the ban on electricity and cars, when many other modern conveniences are okay (essentially anything that can be powered by something other than electricity or gasoline, or so it seems in these parts), and why it’s okay to ride in someone else’s car (did one of the founders of the religion have a tiff with Thomas Edison and Henry Ford or something?). But as one of the “English”, I doubt I will ever be told the secrets behind their beliefs, so they will probably always be something of a mystery to me.

Technorati Tags: Amish, telephone, wiretap, theft, crime, teenager, MichiganTelephone

So this is my second article today mentioning Asterisk, but I like to balance out a negative article with a positive one when I can, and I think this is kind of cool. The VoipJots.com blog has an article on adding Click-to-Call to Asterisk@Home. This could be a great thing if you have family members who still have Plain Old Telephone Service and have never bothered to select any kind of inexpensive calling plan, whereas you’re on a flat-rate plan, or are buying “pay as you go” outgoing and paying only a penny or two per minute. Now they can go to the web (even a private web page you’ve set up just for them, that is not linked from anywhere else) and initiate a call ringing both your phone and their phone.

This should be of interest to any Asterisk@Home users who have family members (including themselves) that are “on the road” frequently. Now, as long as they have access to a computer and are near a phone on which they can receive incoming calls, they can initiate a call “back home.” Of course there are obvious business-related uses as well.

I have not personally installed this, but one person who commented on the post said it worked on the first try.

Now for those who fancy yourselves as expert coders (or the original author if he wants to do it), here’s a challenge. Add a second text input field labeled “Enter optional extension number if one is needed to complete the call”, and if that box is filled in, then when the person local to the Asterisk box picks up the phone, they should hear a recording that says something like “When the call is connected, ask for extension (whatever was entered in the field), repeating, ask for extension (whatever).” (I know, there’s nothing like that in Asterisk’s standard sounds, so for now you could just have it say something like “extension” followed by the number a couple of times). The point of this would be that if you want a callback at someplace that’s behind a switchboard or PBX, the person on the other end will have enough information to complete the callback.

One caveat, unless you’ve set up your dialing plans in such a way that calls to high cost international destinations are blocked (including those in the North American Numbering Plan area), you might want to be real careful about not making this accessible to just anyone who happens by your web site!

Technorati Tags: Asterisk, VoIP, Click-to-Call, telephone, MichiganTelephone

Before I begin, I want to tell you a little about my background. My first experience with a computer when when a friend let me use a spare account he had on a PDP-10 mainframe at Western Michigan University back in the early 1970’s. He was taking computer science and learning the FORTRAN computer language. I was asking, “But what can you DO with a computer?” so he showed me the BASIC language and how I could write simple programs.

Thing was, it quickly became apparent that the computer science students were indoctrinated to believe that BASIC was just a beginner’s language (after all, the “B” in BASIC stands for “Beginner’s”, doesn’t it?) and couldn’t be used to do anything useful. The problem was that I don’t think the students had been given the full BASIC command list. Even on those early days, the BASIC was fairly powerful and I wrote a couple of programs that did things that my friend had believed simply could not be done in BASIC (because his professors had led him to believe that FORTRAN was the language of the future, and that BASIC couldn’t do much of anything. Anyone still using FORTRAN?).

Anyway, for some reason there were only two computer languages that ever really “clicked” with the way my brain is wired – BASIC and Z-80 assembly language, as used on the old Radio Shack TRS-80’s. C was always totally incomprehensible to me, and most other high level languages don’t do much for me either. The other thing that I picked up on to some degree was the old DOS batch files, which were in many ways rather similar to today’s Linux shell scripts. I wouldn’t call myself an “expert programmer” in any of those languages (“expert programmers” write things like operating systems and word processing programs) but I could do most of the simple tasks I wanted to do.

One of my pages on the Resources for Michigan Telephone Users site shows a very large table of local calling areas covering every exchange in Michigan. The actual data is in a comma-quote delimited file but guess how I create the actual HTML table? A small BASIC program that still runs under the old Microsoft QBASIC, which I have carried from computer to computer as I have upgraded over the years (I think it originally came out in the early 1980’s). This may seem silly to some of you but let’s say that I need to change ever instance in the data file of “SBC” to “AT – I can whip out a short BASIC program to do it in a few minutes AND I don’t have to consult any command reference pages or books to do it.

And that bring me to my point – modern languages may be more powerful but they sure aren’t more readable. For example on Linux you can do powerful string replacements using SED but unless you have a memory like an elephant you are going to need to find a reference somewhere (in my case, one written for average people, not Linux experts) that explains all the variations on the command. Actually writing the code may take ten seconds, but trying to figure out what to write may take half an hour (or more, give all the irrelevent pages you will first turn up). With BASIC I know EXACTLY what all the string commands do – it is right there in their name! The thing about programming languages that non-geeks can use is that they are mnemonic.

We all know this but yet somehow it sometimes gets lost on the people who write software. Take the Asterisk PBX – in their configuration files (which, in effect can contain mini-programs) they have an excellent set of commands. The variable syntax takes a little getting used to (and I’m not sure I have it totally figured out yet) but nothing is really that cryptic. It’s just that the Asterisk command set is pretty much designed to handle call flow and nothing else – it has little or no math cabability, or ability to read bits of data from files and utilize that data, at least not natively to the Aserisk command set. At least none that I’ve determined so far.

Let’s say you want to do something that SHOULD be simple. For example, here’s one possible scenario:

Grab an XML file from http://www.nws.noaa.gov/data/current_obs/KDET.xml (which is local weather observations for the Detroit City Airport, but there are XML files for other cities on that server).

Find the <temp_f> and </temp_f> tags and extract the temperature from between them.

Then, simply say the temperature using the “SayDigits” command.

This SHOULD be easy. But, in my limited experience, both Asterisk and Linux will fight you every step of the way, or at least they do me when I try to do things like this. Linux gives me fits because of its permissions (such as the fact that you can set an environment variable within a shell script, but it can’t be seen or used outside that script!) and a few other oddities. Asterisk because it apparently has no way to simply pick up a value from a text file and say it.

In case you haven’t guessed from the previous paragraphs, I have no problem in getting Asterisk to spawn a shell script that can extract the proper bit of XML data using SED, and I can get that data written to a file as a text string, no problem – just a couple of shell script lines. But what I cannot figure out is how to get Asterisk to say the contents of that text file!

So now we turn to the high level languages. Asterisk can use programs written in Perl (ugh), PHP (double ugh), and I think one other language I can’t recall. Okay, so here’s a really dumb question – why don’t they include a BASIC interpreter, so that us non-programmers can have a hope of getting something done without totally losing our minds?

Anyway, I’m out on the web searching for a solution to this, and what do I come across but an online chapter of an O’Reilly book called Asterisk-The Future of Telephony, And lo and behold, in Chapter 9 (PDF file), starting on book page 163 and continuing through page 168, there is a script written in PHP that supposedly will grab the XML file, and read not only the temperature, but the wind direction and speed back to the caller. Oh, happy day, all I have to do is carefully copy the code, put it in a PHP file, save it in the agi-bin directory, change the permissions to make sure it’s executable (can’t forget that!) and call it using something like this:

exten = *199,1,Answer
exten = *199,2,AGI(temperature.php)
exten = *199,3,Hangup

And it SHOULD work. Yes, it SHOULD work, but it doesn’t, and how do you debug a thing like this? Meanwhile I am looking at a file that has 180 lines of code (including some comments and whitespace, but not much). Remember, I was able to write a batch file that got the temperature and wrote it to a text file in TWO lines.

Hey, Asterisk developers – how about a “SayDigitsFromFile” command that takes a string from a text file and says the digits (and things like “plus” for + and “minus” for “-”? I know, the great thing about open source code is that anyone can write extensions. The “Catch 22″ is that if I knew how to write the extension to the “SayDigits” command, I could probably write those Perl or PHP scripts and wouldn’t need the extension.

Now if anyone would like to show me the error of my ways and post a way to do this, PLEASE feel free to leave a comment and/or send me e-mail. In the meantime, I’m tired of spending six hours trying (unsuccessfully) to make Asterisk and Linux do something that it would take me ten minutes (tops) to do if there were a good BASIC interpreter available that could be called and used – or even if you could pass variables from Asterisk to a bash shell script and receive the result back in Asterisk variables.

I know, there probably isn’t one person reading this that will agree with me but still I had to say it. Besides, it explains why I haven’t been blogging as much this week – if you spend six hours beating yourself bloody, so to speak, trying (and failing) to accomplish something you just KNOW should be easy, that’s six hours less you have to do any reading or writing. And since I tend to be just a little obsessive, I hate to give up when I think that maybe just one more tweak will make things start working! But at some point, I need to sleep!

Technorati Tags: Asterisk, Linux, bash, shell, script, scripts, PHP, BASIC, MichiganTelephone

Yesterday Networking Pipeline reported that former FCC chairman Michael Powell thinks that Net Neutrality is ‘Doing Great’. Of course, this is the same person who was also reported as saying that we have too much choice in the media. Yes, there are people who thought we were all better off when we only had three networks to choose from. Sometimes I think there is a fine line between nostalgia and dementia.

Anyway, coming back to the real world, Rich Tehrani posted an article today, in which he in turn referenced Fred Goldstein’s article on network neutrality. One thing these gentlemen are calling attention to is that Verizon Wireless is already trying to create a non-neutral network insofar as their customers are concerned, only they are going the legal route, a.k.a. the EVDO terms of service (TOS). Rick points out that these contain “onerous restrictions” including a ban on the use of “Voice over IP (VoIP)” (among several other things).

Now, if we had more than one nationwide provider of wireless broadband, this might not be so much of an issue. But folks, it looks right now as though unless something changes, Verizon may become the only provider that has virtually nationwide wireless broadband. Sure, there will be wireless “hot spots” here and there, but only Verizon will be saying something to the effect of, “get an account from us and you can use your broadband (but only in ways we deem appropriate) wherever you travel.”

Michael Powell would probably love this situation – who needs all those choices anyway – but as Rich notes, “… I don’t want them telling me when I can do it, why I can do it, etc. Frankly I am surprised that this hasn’t caused an uproar on the web. Is anyone other than Fred and me concerned about such terms of service?”

Fred, I think a lot of us are. I know I am, but I also know that many of us feel a bit powerless because we can’t throw bribes campaign contributions at politicians like the big phone companies do. And when we go to vote, it seems like all the politicians are feeding at the same trough. If anyone can figure out a way to put an end to this unholy alliance of politicians, lobbyists, and big corporations (without resorting to violence, or anything illegal), I think many of us would be in.

One point I will make is that in a roundabout way, allowing network neutrality to be eroded could wind up being a dangerous thing for the politicians. It’s a known fact that if you can distract the public with amusements, and if they have enough to eat (the phrase “bread and circuses” comes to mind), you have far less social unrest. Today the television set and the Internet are our “circuses”, and they are messing with both – TV through the switch to HDTV, and along with that, additional content and usage restrictions to placate the entertainment industry, and now if the phone companies have their way, people will not be able to do the things they really want to do (and have been doing heretofore) on the Internet. Oh, and the price of bread is going way up too, thanks to the fuel price increases. I don’t know, but if I were a politician I think I’d want to keep the Internet as wide open as possible, just in the interest of self-preservation!

Technorati Tags: net neutrality, Verizon, EVDO, TOS, VoIP, cellular, wireless, broadband, telecommunications, MichiganTelephone

Sometimes an organization can be a victim of their own success. Tom Keating blogged about this today – he wrote:

Asterikast is a podcast that teaches and explains about the VoIP-capable Asterisk PBX by Digium. According to Asterikast, “We also plan on having videos that can help step you through the process of setting up your very own Asterisk PBX.”

They already have two episodes available for download. Episode I, “the very first episode of Asterikast” they cover how to compile Asterisk and setup one SIP phone. Episode II has much higher quality video, audio and on-screen footage. They cover voicemail, conference bridges, macros in Asterisk and TDM/TDM cards. Looks like they’re also offering a computer pre-installed and pre-configured with Slackware and Asterisk for $800.00 if your a bit intimidated to install Linux + Asterisk. Both are actually pretty easy to install, and in fact it’s worth checking out the videos just to see how easy it truly is.

And yes, I would love to do just that, but it seems like everyone else who read Tom’s blog must have had the same idea, because the transfer rate from the site has been slowed to a crawl all day (your first 300 baud modem probably got better throughput!).

The site does say, “For optimal download speeds use a torrent client”, but unfortunately only episode 2 is available that way. Good luck trying to get episode 1, at least for the next day or two – you’ll be competing with me, and who knows how many other people!

Technorati Tags: Asterisk, PBX, Asterikast, VoIP, Linux, telephone, telecommunications, MichiganTelephone

David S. Isenberg posted an entry in his blog today which I will quote in its entirety:

Paraphrase of note: Michael K. Powell
Mike Powell is, above all else, charming. He’s a politician, and a good one. At the Silicon Flatirons Telecom Summit, he held forth on the rough and tumble chaos of the innovative marketplace, but avoided just about any mention of infrastructure, even his baby spectrum re-regulation.

But by far, to me, the most important remark Powell made was (and I paraphrase, I couldn’t type fast enough):

The Washington DC political process is more broken now than at any other time I’ve seen in my life. It has collapsed in on itself. I went home and asked my father [Colin Powell] if I was missing something, and he agreed with me that the process has collapsed into pure partisanship. The power of the incumbency has grown. People are not concerned with what’s right or what’s in the nations interest, they are purely interested in killing their opponents.

He went on in this vein for several minutes. He did not qualify or weaken his remarks. He’s pissed.

I just want to note that as an observer of how things are working, even at the state level here in Michigan, I have been suspecting that this is true for quite some time now. To some degree the big corporations were always able to get their way, but nowadays it almost seems that politicians put their vote up for bids and vote according to the wishes of the highest bidder. Since the general public has no input into this process, we get screwed royally.

The other problem is that politicians are, by and large, some of the most damnable liars you will ever encounter, especially prior to an election. How many times have we heard promises of reform, that evaporated quicker than a drop of water on top of a hot stove once the election was over? I think that if there is one think that Hurricane Katrina has taught a lot of Americans, it’s that you simply cannot trust the government to have your best interests as an individual at heart. The only time they care about you at all is when you can vote them out of office.

I can’t say that I ever remember a time, during my entire lifetime, when politicians as a group were truly honest, caring people. But, there was at least the expectation that they would act like they cared. In a way, we of the general public were like the guy having sex with a prostitute – deep down he knows she’s faking it, but still he wants her to be a really good actress in bed. We are like that with politicians – we know, somewhere, that they most likely got into politics to advance their own self interests, but we expect them to at least make some sort of pretense of being genuinely interested in us, and to even vote as if our interests matter to them.

But it seems like lately, the politicians have forgotten about us entirely – they can’t even fake it anymore. All they are doing is resolving conflicts between corporate interests (probably in favor of whichever party pays the most), while trying to cover their own backs. I don’t know how to turn this around, but if nothing changes I suspect that things are going to get much worse before they get better.

Technorati Tags: politics, politicians, government, telecommunications, MichiganTelephone

It’s certainly not that I believe something just because I see it in the press, but every now and the New York Times actually takes the right position on an issue. What is more important is that people who have influence read the Times, and maybe reading this editorial will wake them up a little. I especially like the closing paragraphs:

Most Americans have little or no choice of broadband I.S.P.’s, so they would have few options if those providers shifted away from neutrality. Congress should protect access to the Internet in its current form. Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, says he intends to introduce an Internet neutrality bill, which would prohibit I.S.P.’s from favoring content providers that paid them fees, or from giving priority to their own content.

Some I.S.P.’s are phone and cable companies that make large campaign contributions, and are used to getting their way in Washington. But Americans feel strongly about an open and free Internet. Net neutrality is an issue where the public interest can and should trump the special interests.

Brother, you can say that again. And again, and again …..

Technorati Tags: net neutrality. broadband, DSL, telephone, telephony, regulation, legislation, editorial, MichiganTelephone

I know I haven’t been posting in my blog as much this past week, and this is part of the reason.

My son put an Asterisk@Home server on an old spare PC. He wanted to play with it and see what he could do with it. His mistake was giving me access.

Now the first thing I have to tell you is that I am a Windows user and although I’ve tried installing and using Linux a couple times in the past (the less said about that, the better), I’m not real familiar with that O/S. I like my interfaces to be graphical, thank you very much, and whenever someone tells me I have to go to a command line and type something, I tend to wonder if they’re unaware that there’s an operating system that almost never makes you do that. I know some people like typing things in command lines; I personally hate it. What can I say?

Thing is, my son has had even less experience with Linux that I have, at least as far as I know. So when he told me he’d put up Asterisk@Home, I thought this was going to be something nearly impossible to work with.

But that wasn’t the case at all. While I wasn’t around when he installed it, apparently you just burn the installation image to a CD and pop it in the machine and let it do its thing (it assumes there is nothing on the hard drive you want to keep, and does a fresh install of both Linux and Asterisk@Home), and once the box is set up and connected through your network, everything in Asterisk is administered via a web browser interface from another machine. For system tasks you can use Webmin, or you can open an SSH session (using the putty program under Windows) if you really need to see that command line.

Now the thing is, to a person that has an interest in phone systems and who has always had the hidden desire to explore the workings of a PBX, this is something that really could divert a little time – or maybe a lot if time if you get involved in trying to solve some ridiculous puzzle like “Why is the time of day readout that you get by dialing *60 not precise?”, and then trying to fix it. Something like that is a great way to kill a few hours on a cold February night, especially if you know absolutely nothing about how to use system commands or variables when you start out.

For those of you that may also be thinking about taking the plunge into Asterisk@Home (and don’t let the @Home part fool you, it’s perfectly adequate for a small office as long as you don’t have some funky requirements that would be better suited to regular Asterisk), here are a few essential sites:

• Nerd Vittles Blog – Ward Mundy’s site full of Asterisk@Home tutorials and articles. Only thing to watch out for is that some articles have been superseded by newer ones, so make sure you’re looking at the latest article covering any particular topic. This site was probably our primary reference during initial configuration.
• Set Up Your Own IP-PBX – the thing I like about this site is that it has lots of helpful screen shots. The thing I dislike is that they apparently operate from the assumption that one of the very first things you are going to want to do is sign up for a commercial “pay as you go service” to route inbound and outbound traffic. This is really not necessary for initial testing purposes. A good supplement to the site above, but pick and choose which information you use.
• Asterisk@Home Without Tears – The Dumb-Me Guide (Australian Experience) – from the land downunda comes this excellent guide. I actually like this one better than the one above, even if it is somewhat Australian-centric.
• Asterisk@home Handbook Wiki – think of it as an e-book that anyone can add to. For that reason, the quality of the writing may be a bit uneven, but all in all this is a quite useful resource. This site is a gold mine of Asterisk information; many more documents are linked from this page.
• Asterisk Users Group at Voxilla – lots of good info here on both Asterisk@Home and the regular version.
• Asterisk Master Sound ListThis one will seem kind of silly until the day that you want to construct your own voice announcement, and wonder what native sound recordings are available. There’s also a few humorous “Easter Eggs” in there – for example, you could set up your system so when your mother calls, she hears an operator-like voice saying, “We’re off gambling, and getting drunk.” It will also help you locate the infamous recordings, like “Weasels have eaten our phone system” and “All representatives of the household are currently assisting other telemarketers. Please hold and your call will be answered in the order it was received.” Never fear, there are a lot of potentially useful recordings also. Possibly the most interesting one (and the most dangerous if you are not VERY careful how you use it) recites, “Will you marry me? Press 1 for yes or 2 for no.” Yeah, that’s how a gal wants to get a proposal!

Do you know of any other great sites for Asterisk or Asterisk@Home users? If so, leave them in the comments – if I get ambitious (and caught up on lost sleep!) I may add some of the best links to my sidebar.

One other thing that may save someone a lot of grief, particularly if you try to use something like Free World Dialup for test purposes and get one-way audio – if your Asterisk box is behind a firewall, make sure you port forward the requisite UDP ports (doing so will apparently NOT interfere with any standalone VoIP service that uses a hardware adapter, contrary to what you might think – YMMV so be sure to test if you do have hardware adapters connected) AND be sure you add these lines to the [general] section of sip.conf

nat=yes
externip = your fixed internet address, e.g. youraccount.dyndns.org
fromdomain = your fixed internet address (again)
localnet = 192.168.x.0/255.255.255.0

(Replace the x with the octet number used in your local network).

Technorati Tags: Asterisk, Asterisk@home, PBX, VoiP, telephone, telephony, MichiganTelephone

I was trying to make a test call a few minutes ago from Free World Dialup, through SIPbroker, and into a SIPbroker connected number. Instead of getting the connection I expected, I got a recording that said (as best I can remember it);

“Welcome to the SIPbroker PSTN gateway – please dial your PSTN number now.”

I suppose I should have tried dialing something but I fumble-fingered at that point and on a subsequent attempt the call went through as expected. Thing is, I didn’t know SIPbroker had an outbound PSTN gateway, let alone why I hit it. Did I accidentally stumble upon something that hasn’t been announced yet?

Technorati Tags: VoIP, telephone, telephony, SIPbroker, MichiganTelephone

I have just read a very disturbing article entitled “Network Neutrality and an Internet with Vision” (also available here). Here’s an excerpt:

The rhetoric is whipping through the air in Washington and racing at a dizzying pace across the Internet, as highly publicized hearings on a “network neutrality” bill were held on February 7. Vint Cerf testified that the issue would determine “the future of the Internet.” In opposing the bill, the incumbent Bell telephone companies suggest that without their paternal care, the Internet doesn’t have a future in this country.

The target of the bill (introduced by Senator Ron Wyden, D-Oregon) is recently-aired plans by telephone companies, which I reviewed a few weeks ago, to be decidedly non-neutral on how they deliver Internet traffic. Content providers willing to pay extra would get their content delivered at a higher bandwidth.

While it’s easy to wax indignant over telephone companies’ presumptuousness in deciding what packets should travel at what times, it’s harder to step back and take in the economic issues driving the proposed change. And there are technical questions about it as well. All of which I’ll try to cover in this article.

Pay before you play

The most telling moment in the Senate hearings, philosophically, came during a presentation by J. Gregory Sidak of Georgetown University. He said that ideally, each “product” going over an Internet connection would pay its fair share of the cost of the connection. This principle places all communication at the mercy of financial considerations. Taken to its conclusion, the principle would eliminate any communication that lacks a financial justification.

And that goes, of course, for communications that have no business model yet, but could have one in the future. With apologies for restating the familiar, I have to remind readers that the Internet and the World Wide Web started as noncommercial initiatives.

I will just add that if you care about the network neutrality issue, or for that matter, about keeping track of all the whopping outright lies and half-truths that the big phone companies have been telling to politicians, regulators, the news media, and the public for many years now (and the whoppers they are continuing to attempt to make us believe), the blog you should bookmark or add to your newsfeed reader is 200 Billion Broadband Scandal. This blog is associated with the e-book of the same name by TeleTruth but you can get a lot of useful (and sometimes disturbing) information from the blog, even if you haven’t read the e-book.

Technorati Tags: net neutrality, TeleTruth, regulation, legislation, MichiganTelephone

You probably recall that last year there were a couple of incidents involving the lack of working 911 service on VoIP that got massive media coverage, mostly fueled by the baby Bells’ PR machine. These stories were probably directly responsible for the onerous regulations placed upon VoIP companies, requiring them to implement enhanced 911 service within a nearly impossible timeframe.

What doesn’t get a lot of media coverage is when the exact same thing happens in the wireline world.

Here in Michigan there is a law firm called Clark Hill PLC that specializes in (among other things) telecommunications law. Every couple of weeks they put out an issue of the Michigan Telecommunications Report, which (among other things) carries a summary of new telecom-related applications and complaints filed at the Michigan Public Service Commission. The issue dated January 27, 2006 (Vol. 22, No. 2) was just placed online (.PDF file) and on page 14 it noted this recently-filed complaint:

Case No. U-14761
Michelle Bain v Talk America
(consumer complaint: failure to provide service)

January 13, 2006 Michelle Bain (“Complainant”€), of Fraser, filed with the Michigan Public Service Commission a formal complaint against Talk America, alleging that because Talk America failed to provide service within the promised 7-10 days, her mother was not able to contact 9-1-1 when she suffered and subsequently died from a heart attack. Complainant request, among other things, that Talk America be fined and pay for the funeral expenses incurred by her mother’s death.

As i noted on the MI-Telecom mailing list, it is not just the VoIP industry that has problems with 911. Of course, we don’t know yet if this case has any validity or not, and even if it does, we don’t know yet which company dragged their feet in making the switch (TalkAmerica, or the company that previously had the complainant’s mother’s service).

Wouldn’t it be ironic (and tragic) if it turned out that the company that caused this situation (by perhaps not responding to a number porting request in a timely manner?) happened to be one of those companies that fanned the flames last year over the VoIP 911 failures?

I’m not making any accusations here, but it does seem strange to me that the federal government has passed regulations that mandate that cell phone number transfers must take place in an expedient manner, but that these regulations don’t seem to apply in the wireline world. It would certainly seem to me that if a delay in porting a wireline number turns out to have resulted in a death (something we probably won’t know for quite some time), that would be a very good reason for the FCC to force the wireline companies that have a tendency to drag their feet to start fulfilling number porting requests, within, say, 15 minutes of receipt.

“15 minutes!” I hear you cry! “That’s totally unreasonable!” No, it is totally possible with the computerized systems we have today (except perhaps in some exchanges using really ancient equipment, if any such still exist, but those exchanges probably don’t offer Local Number Portability to begin with), and in fact much more reasonable than the demands placed on the VoIP operators, given the resources available to the big phone companies. And, it could save lives, something the FCC seems to have indicated they consider important, given their harsh demands of the VoIP companies.

But then, would the FCC ever make an “unreasonable” demand of a baby Bell? It’s real easy for government officials to attack those segments of an industry that don’t have high-priced lawyers and lobbyists on their side, but if it turns out that a porting delay was responsible for a death, and the FCC does nothing in response, that will just reinforce the idea that they are a bunch of bullies that only pick on the weak and defenseless, while letting their “friends” in big telecom get away with just about anything.

Technorati Tags: 911, e911, emergency, FCC, VoiP, telephone, telecommunications, Michigan, MichiganTelephone