Traditionally we all are using the hardware PBX for our day to day application.That is we buy a Hardware from the vendors connect to our telephone system and use it.Lots or proprietary PBX are there in the market that we can buy and install to our Telephone connection or PRI connection.

The disadvantage with these system is that it cost a lot and it will only have limited functionality. A normal people cant afford it.

Have you ever think about a PBX that can be downloaded from the web and can use for the same application that we does with a hardware PBX or much more that a hardware does normally.Nothing to wonder, a company called Degium is providing such a software.

Degium provides an open source software called Asterisk which does the same functionality of a PBX and more like.

• Building up IVR(interactive voice responce) application
• VoIP calls making and handling
• Connecting employees working from home to the office PBX over broadband connections
• Connecting offices in various states over VoIP, Internet or a private IP network
• Giving all employees voicemail, integrated with the Web and their E-mail
• Building interactive voice applications, that connect to your ordering system or other inhouse applications
• Giving access to the company PBX for business travellers, connecting over VPN from airport or hotel WLAN hotspots
• Music-on-hold for customers waiting in queues, supporting streaming media as well as MP3 music
• Call queues where call agents jointly handle answering incoming calls and monitor the queue
• Text-to-speech system integration (the Festival Open Source and Cepstral Swift speech synthesis software can be integrated)
• Call data record (CDR) generation for integration with billing systems
• Voice recognition system integration (such as the Sphinx Open Source voice recognition software)
• The ability to interface with normal telephone lines, ISDN basic rate and primary rate interfaces

Interesting right…..We can kick off the proprietary PBX systems and can build our own application as we needed with our Opensource PBX.

Now we have a look of what is a PBX or (Private branch exchange)……in a laymans term we can tell PBX is a telephone exchange in a home or in a office which can have all the features of a local telephone exchange….(it can be a hardware exchange or a software exchange)……

“A Private Branch eXchange (PBX) is a telephone exchange that serves a particular business or office, as opposed to one that a common carrier or telephone company operates for many businesses or for the general public. PBXs are also referred to as:”

• PABX – Private Automatic Branch eXchange
• EPABX – Electronic Private Automatic Branch Exchange

This is what wikipedia tells …..
as the normal telephone exchange do…we can make many extensions with a PBX can route our calls as the telephone exchange does…..for example 106 PBX means it will have 1 P&T conection and 6 extension….P&T(Post and Telegraphy) ..it is a connection that we get from our telephone exchange……and the extension means we have locally connected 6 extension phone with the PBX……..

Lets starts from the very begining….

The word PBX is some thing very nice to hear and very commenly hearing one..i heard first when i was in my degree days we had a paper there called Electronic communication…when i heard this first time did’t got anything…when i came to know the expansion of it (PBX) Private Branch exchange……i got that it was some thing related to telephone exchange….someone told me that it is like an intercom….intercom..???oops..with god grace i don’t know what is it on that time….

Later i got what really is …An intercom (intercommunication device) is an electronic communications system within a building or group of buildings….it can called as phone with in a house or an office with out a external connection…(external connection means we have a group of telephone but don’t have a connection from the telephone exchange)…and our groups of phone is interconnected…in computer terms we can call it as a Local Area telephone network or a LAN