Comments at the end and in-line... On 1/18/2006, "Steve Murphy" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hello-- > > I've been making note of a local situation that seems somewhat > irritating, and thought maybe some of you experts out there, might be > able to propose some alternatives. > > The situation goes like this: > > Rural Wyoming. Cody, to be exact, but I'd wager that you could almost > anywhere in Wyoming and find similar situations.
Or just about anywhere else QWest in involved... > The county gov. phones and the school system phones do not provide > callerid. > > Why? because they bought T1's at like $1k/mo instead of separate lines > at $100/line/mo each. Saves them a ton of money. Has been for years. > 5 or more years ago, callerid was not available out here. Slowly, over > the last 5 years or so, they have been upgrading the populace, so now, > almost everyone reports callerid, except the county gov., and the school > system. They come thru as "unavailable". They both want it, but they > can't afford to get/give it. They'd have to switch back to individual > lines to get that, at over 2x the cost, and they'd rather die. > > Now comes the interesting part. Qwest is offering most customers the > option to block anonymous calls. All you have to do is dial a *xx and > you won't get those pesky > charity/politicals/telemartket/pollsters/magazineresubscibers/etc. > > And you won't get the county gov. or the school system calls either. > > Why? Well, apparently, they say that the switches in Cody/Powell are > old, feature-free switches, and one is a slave switch to the other or > some such. And these old switches provide no capability to play with CID > on T1 lines. Probably still crossbar LOL > And they sure as heck are not going to upgrade the switch for a small > group of country bumpkins. What's interesting to me, as that of all the > features they send us little pamphlets about in our monthly bills, very > few of them are actually available here. Same with most other 'copper' providers - even if they have it - you can't get it without major bucks... > Are there any clever solutions to this problem, for the county gov or > school system? So - my thoughts (I used to live on the other side of the Bighorns) 1. What is the cost difference between a T1 'phone' and a T1 'data' line? One would think that the Wyoming government should 'help' or get a good rate on a data line... 2. Replace all your PBXs (like you have one LOL) with Asterisk 8-) 3. Get a VoIP provider (I use a TelIAX exchange out of Sheridan so my Mom can call locally) 4. Use you 'huge' user base to get a discount/special deal with the VoIP provider to get 'proper' CID AND a good rate (Hey helping out the gov and education is a feather for anyone - except QWest) 5. Drop all but 1 analog line for each location (to cover 911 calls) 6. Collect your $50 'bonus' for saving them thousands of dollars a month. and 7. Tell QWest to stick it.... Can't think of a better way to spend the summer (except camping) Brett _______________________________________________ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
