[TriLUG] OT: TDM voice, voip gateways, and toll free calling

[William Schulz]

On Fri, Jul 16, 2004 at 11:46:23AM -0400, Ryan Leathers wrote:
> OFF TOPIC - not Linux related - 
> 
> Since there has been a lot of interest lately in VOIP I will hazard an
> off topic related question
> 
> Suppose I want to advertise a single toll free number to my users around
> the country.  The users dial this number using any old phone on the
> PSTN.  What I want to happen next is for the call to be converted to SIP
> and reach my VOIP service (basically a conference) as inexpensively as
> possible.
> 
> My guess is that a single phone number reaching a single gateway is more
> likely than a single number being directed to one of many geographically
> distributed gateways.  So, the TDM network and toll free number will
> likely continue to be a significant cost.
> 
> Is there a better solution?
> 
> If not, I have a static IP address for my service and I need to connect
> to it via SIP.  I suppose I could build my own gateway and purchase a
> toll free number terminating service at the gateway.  Is there a service
> provider out there who could handle this for me?

I can't answer the entire question, but NuFone [1] offers incoming
toll-free DIDs for 2c per minute.  They support multiple concurrent
calls, and can trunk them in via IAX2 or SIP.

With Asterisk, you could then host the conference based on its MeetMe
technology.  You could also pass calls to other asterisk installations
via your extension.conf.  Of course, if you using some other solution,
this is all out the window.

S