Re: [tlug] 7/10 TLUG Technical Meeting - voice communication questions

[ben konrath <ben@example.com>]

On Tue, Jul 06, 2004 at 03:27:29PM +0900, Shawn wrote:
> many of the providers do require special hardware etc...
> 
> For GnomeMeeting you need a quicknet linejack (what about $299.95) in  
> combination with a microtelco account (roughly $.03 -035/min or so).   
> Correct?

The reason you need the quicknet card is because it has a hardware
implementation of the G.723.1 codec, which is patented and thus cannot be
implemented in free software [1].

> Anyone know of a way to get pc to phone calls without that piece of  
> hardware?  I am beginning to suspect that asterisk would require it as  
> well.

When I was in Japan I used voip blasters [2] to do computer to computer
calls with the open source fobbit software [3]. The reason I'm bringing
this up is because these devices are significantly cheaper than the
quicknet cards (in the 30USD range) and I've read a report on the fobbit
forums that the voip blaster works with Asterisk using this [4] driver. 

It's interesting to note that the voip blaster has the patented G.723.1
audio codec and thus one might be able to use it with the MicroTelco
service that GnomeMeeting provides. Maybe I'll poke my head in the
GnomeMeeting IRC channel and find out if this is actually possible. If
I find out anything useful, I'll report back.

The only caveat is that the voip blasters have been discontinued. I
managed to buy a couple from a computer store here in Toronto before
they disappeared and have since purchased a few from ebay. 

Hope this info was semi-useful, Ben

[1] http://www.gnomemeeting.org/index.php?rub=3&pos=0&faqpage=x167.html#AEN196
[2] http://www.webstation.lk/infotalk/voIPblaster.html
[3] http://fobbit.sourceforge.net/ 
[4] https://sourceforge.net/projects/voip-blaster