[Discuss] End of the line for Obi100/110

[dsr at randomstring.org (Dan Ritter)]

On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 07:35:40PM -0700, Rich Braun wrote:
> A rival claims that its product will keep on working, which begs the question
> of why Obihai is sitting on its butt not implementing whatever protocol is
> claimed by said rival (GVMate).

GVMate is a USB-RJ11 audio card. It doesn't actually talk to any
VOIP service; there's a copy of Chrome running on the attached
computer.


> How is all this related to BLU/Linux?  Well, if I have to start paying for
> VoIP service, I don't want to have to fire up a spare PC running Windows to
> run 24/7 phone service (not at $.35/kWh for the electric bill).
> 
> Do I finally say screw it, I've had a "landline" phone for too many years, and
> cut the cord?  Or is there something about as good as Google Voice that I
> should consider switching to?  Frankly, GV just simply *blows away* all rivals
> in terms of features/capabilities/everything-- regardless of price.  The fact
> that it's been free for years is beside the point.

You won't find anything as easy to use, but you can get almost all of the
functionality from Asterisk, especially with one of the wrappers like
PBX In A Flash (PIAF), which comes as Raspberry Pi images, BeagleBone
images, VM images, or installable Linux packages.

The major missing functionality is transcription of voice mail,
which has never worked well for me on GV anyway. Instead I have
voice mail encoded to mp3 and attached to an email which is sent
to my cell phone.

Lots of options for connections to POTS land, ranging from about
0.5 cents/minute on up.

-dsr-