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[suityou01]

OK I set up a sipgate account. And downloaded a softhone.
I got allocated a local number.
I went to dial out and it told me I don't have enough credit. Fairy Nuff.
Reaches for company CC
Enters details in the site (https checked first)
Error 916. Someone from technical support will contact your shortly.

How long is shortly? There must be a number I can call from the softphone? Nope. There must be a number shirley? Nope. An email address. Cowards. OK I'll email them.

Support ticket email comes back with "We aim to respond to all support queries within 48hrs"

Taxi for Sipgate.

[suityou01]

Bought (rented) a Luton number from voiptalk

Much better web site. Also could add credit ok. Very easy to use.
Also, one of the routing options is "Asterix PBX"

Just need to get a Dynamic DNS registration for my Virgin DHCP lease.

[Durbs]

Sounds like you are sorted but these: http://www.voipfone.co.uk seem ok.

For anyone else wanting a business No, i've just been reading their page: http://www.voipfone.co.uk/How_to_Get...r_Business.php which has a few good tips.

I've tried a few solutions to get a 'proper' number for MyCo/Plan B's, not PBX or anything fancy like SY01 is after but guess more applicable to what most of us need.

- Pay as you go cheap chuckaway mobile. Looked unprofessional having a mob number and i always forgot to charge and carry the second mobile meaning whenever i got round to turning it on the voicemail was full of missed messages.

- Dedicated BT business line with hardware answerphone. This cost a lot, i'm not around much in the day and was just coming back to the answerphone full of sales spiel and those automated "you have won a fantastic holiday" messages.

- BT Call Sign. Currently using this and its 'OK' but uses the house phone with a slightly different ringtone so not always obvious its a business call so anyone answers it.

Looks like this VOIP thing along with message emails is the way to go but that link above seems to explain the options very well.

[downsouth]

Thumbs up here for voipfone also, althought I only use a basic voip service and email notification for voicemails, cant fault the support

If you need any more on voipfone pop over to ukbusinessforums, plenty good stuff about them.

[suityou01]

Getting somewhere. I have to get my softphone registered with asterix. Getting a registration failure at the moment but will crack it. It's not as easy as username/password, there's no such fields for the extension.

Effectively I want to use my softphone as an extension. It has an IP address, and I have routed through the firewall to the pbx ok.

Will get there. I am going for option c) which is write it up thoroughly for CUK and then that will be a good contribution to the CUK community. There must be plenty of you on here that would like a pbx style phone system for pennys, and would benefit from this research.

[Cliphead]

Got Asterisk and FreePBX up and running. Setup a couple of extensions and installed X-Lite softphone on a couple of the PC's here and now got them registering to the server and talking to each other.

Next task, get an account and have access to the outside world then play with all the features.

Painless so far

[suityou01]

Got Asterisk and FreePBX up and running. Setup a couple of extensions and installed X-Lite softphone on a couple of the PC's here and now got them registering to the server and talking to each other.

Next task, get an account and have access to the outside world then play with all the features.

Painless so far

oh you arse, care to share how?

Feck me.

[suityou01]

seriously cliphead, quite cocked off. You ask me to share 'my' experiences, then post a "works for me" type response. Very poor.

[Cliphead]

oh you arse, care to share how?

flip me.

Installed AsteriskNow which basically is a CentOS 5 install CD with everything required setup during install. Admin is handled by FreePBX on the web server so just point a browser to the ip of your server. The default username/password is freepbx/fpbx. After logging in for the first time it is a good idea to click the reload button if it appears. It is also a good idea to regularly update the modules via the "Module Administration" page. Doing this will download and install all the latest updates.

After it was all up and running I was seeing some error messages but a reboot sorted this.

Then I setup two extensions on the Generic SIP Device default.

Setup exactly like here

Then installed X-Lite on two PC's and created the SIP accounts as above. They both registered and me and the girlie have been having a giggle talking to each other, listening to the hold music, leaving voice mail etc.

I've emailed a couple of the providers mentioned in earlier posts about what I need to do to get connected to the outside world so once they get back to me with satisfactory info I'll do the final bit.

I'll probably buy some hardware and phones to mess around for real.

Much fun so far

EDIT: If you can't get the hold music to work - In FreePBX sometimes you might get the following error message in you upload an MP3:

Error Processing: “sox: Can’t open input file ‘/var/lib/asterisk/mohmp3/

Convert the MP3 file to WAV and make sure that you convert it to 11,025 kHz, 16 Bit, Mono 21 kb/sec

[Cliphead]

seriously cliphead, quite cocked off. You ask me to share 'my' experiences, then post a "works for me" type response. Very poor.

Haud yer horses, a one liner wouldn't have done it

EDIT: 9 minutes between yer posts, impatient ****er are we?