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A new patent troll.

SIP Trunking

In the last few weeks a large sleeping troll has come out of hibernation and seems set on disrupting the whole voip market.

Quote

“BT is engaged in licensing an extensive range of standards related patents that address the key features of SIP Trunking providers and VOIP operators providers.

BT’s Patents address a wide range of fundamental capabilities now in widespread deployment, such as:

  • Setting up a call
  • Breaking out to other networks
  • Managing resources efficiently
  • Registering terminal to a network
  • Cost effective call completion
  • Monitoring and alerting of IP call quality”

Well that pretty much covers all of the workings of a SIP network. A full list of the patents is here  .

But its not Just BT, AT&T also have claims over SIP as well see here for a list.

It seems that some of the major patent holders see more money in the licencing of the now ubiquitous SIP protocol than maybe supplying it to customer. Which is a shame as the only ones who will make any money will be the Lawyers in the end.

More to follow on this I’m sure….

Categories
Knowledge Base Technical

Skype for SIP name to DDI with Asterisk

When using Skype for SIP trunks with Asterisk a simple an neat way to enable DDI calling for the skype names is to use the “extension” option.
This means that the ‘To’ in in the sip header is set to what you set.

This can then be picked out with a simple little bit of dialplan

exten => 99051000000000,1,Set(CALLERID(num)=${CALLERID(name)})
exten => 99051000000000,2,Set(cNum=${SIP_HEADER(TO):5:6})
exten => 99051000000000,3,Noop(${cNum})
exten => 99051000000000,4,Goto(from-pstn,${cNum}|1)

In the above example we have 6 digit ddi numbers in the context from-pstn.

Setting up the Skype end is as simple as logging into your BCP and then the relevent profile and clicking on the calling tab

and setting as below

Image

This lets you now use one account and have all your BCP accounts have DDI calls directed at the PBX