VoIP

The Power of Open Source Telephony

Interested in learning more about Asterisk, we spoke to the author.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [November 11, 2005]

Digium is the open source telephony company and its president, Mark Spencer, is the open source telephony expert. When a conference organizer, Rich Tehrani, tried to set up a debate between Spencer and any closed source vendor, none of the other vendors would step up, so Tehrani had to argue the anti-open source side himself.

Spencer says he has one regret about that session: Digium had not yet released its business edition, its certified, warranty-backed PBX, and so he could not answer all of the objections to open source. Now he can.

Spencer's firm is based in Huntsville, Alabama, an aerospace and defense technology city that is also houses the headquarters of telecom insurgent ADTRAN (founded in 1985, NASDAQ: ADTN).

Before founding his own company, Spencer interned at ADTRAN, which therefore became a Digium investor.

Describing the atmosphere of the various companies in Huntsville, Spencer says, "the defense contractors are suit and tie, ADTRAN is khaki pants and polo shirts, and we're jeans and tee-shirts."

Don't underestimate the tee-shirts
In 1999, when Spencer started out, he founded Linux Support Services, a Linux services company that was nothing like Digium. Because his initial capital was $4,000 contributed by himself and his parents, he was unable to purchase a PBX, so he wrote one.

As his was a Linux company, founded on the ideals of open source, it made sense to make the PBX open source too. The PBX is called Asterisk. Although Spencer remains the lead author, the project now has about 350 contributors.

Many companies make money off of open source. There are several Linux companies. Perhaps the best analogy to Digium is Sendmail.com, whose management includes Eric Allman, the author of Sendmail, an open source MTA.

Spencer notes that while companies such as Red Hat have produced commercial Linux builds, Linus himself has not commercialized Linux.

In 2001, with the economy collapsing, Spencer's company realized it needed to switch businesses, and decided to refocus the company around Asterisk.

Don't underestimate the conference
"Some guys said last year that they thought they could put together a conference that was only about Asterisk, and get 100 people to show up," says Spencer, who is happy about Astricon. He says that about 500 people showed up for the very first show, and about 700 at the next one.

The company organizing the conferences is called IPSANDO.

"They're very helpful to Asterisk," says Spencer. "They deliver a lot of loyalty. We get along really well."

In addition to large conferences, the group organizes "road shows" and "boot camps" to help people learn Asterisk. Digium is a "diamond sponsor" of Astricon.

Open source is about team play
In addition to the people who put together Astricon, Digium has a growing list of partners. Of these, we have written about Fonality (see That is the Sound of Fonality). Fonality claims to have over 500 resellers in 45 countries, of whom 80 percent are based in the U.S.

Digium has founded an open source VoIP peering project called Distributed Universal Number Discovery (DUNDi, procounced "dun-dee") and has drafted a General Peering Agreement [.pdf], both of which are revolutionary.

But the project, he says, is fighting organizations that want to be the VeriSign of VoIP peering. "Everyone wants to be a monopoly," Spencer says. "Instead of having a single monopoly, we should peer with one another and keep it a competitive landscape. I told a guy from Neustar that a monopoly never works for the consumer, and he said to me, 'I like my monopoly. That's how I buy my Porche!'"

Spencer hopes that the companies that would pay exorbitant monopoly rents to a monopoly will act to ensure that one does not arise. "People who would be paying the price of monopoly have to stand up to it. I'm happy to be a technology leader, but it doesn't make a difference to the bottom line of Digium's business—unlike the effect a monopoly would have on the bottom line of the ISP."

DUNDi is designed to be open to all technologies, not just Asterisk, says Spencer. The key is to enable interoperability without exposing private data. Spencer says people can use ENUM or any other system they care to—even 302 redirects, for which there are legitimate uses.

Spencer is also very interested in the open source messaging and collaboration project, Zimbra. The software is designed to integrate with traditional business messaging products. Because it's AJAX-based, it should interoperate easily with other open source projects, including Asterisk.

And to go with all of those nifty projects (as well as the upcoming release of Asterisk version 1.2) there's the Asterisk Business Edition.

—End