I have to admit that I have been interested in the PBXs for a long time. One of my most gratifying projects I put together was a PBX and telephone trunk upgrade which saved the company a lot of money. Best of all the savings were easy to find. We just looked at the next phone bill.
At that time all PBXs were propietary, hard to understand, and expensive. Only large companies could afford them. Today the picture has completely changed. The cost has gone down and the features and usability have gone way up. One of the best examples of this is Asterisk. Asterisk is an open source PBX built on the Linux platform. My favorite flavor of Asterisk is the pre-built version called Asterisk@Home. Until recently Asterisk was primarily installed on workstation class computers. This year the nice folks at Linksys changed all of that by embedding a modified version of Asterisk into a box that looks like the standard home router and called it the SPA9000. This box includes a router and is priced at about $400. It is more compact than a PC and they have made a few changes to make it even easier to install. It even has integrated two analog ports for legacy devices, such as, analog telephones, faxes, or answering machines. With the ability to transfer local numbers to VoIP, this new product should be just what the doctor ordered to reduce telephone costs for small businesses have not been able or unwilling to participate in the cost savings available from VoIP.
I have not been able to get my hands on one so far because it such a new product. Stay tuned for me info!