[Spce-user] if it cannot do pbx functions, what exactly would one use it for?

[Andreas Granig]

Hi,

On 05/22/2013 12:47 PM, Theo wrote:
> - I understand that each subscriber is set up with an E.164. So - a
> company is assigned a DID by us. Only 1. But they may have 20
> subscribers? What E.164 numbers do we set up for each of their
> subscribers? Do we just make them up? That will get confusing very
> quickly I think - no longer knowing what is the real number and which is
> not?
>
> - I am unclear on the "implied extensions". Subscribers will want to
> phone each other by dialling an extension. I can set up a rewrite rule
> so that when I dial "400" it rewrites it to whatever E.164 number, but
> that just seems very cumbersome having to do all that for each subscriber?

If your E164 number is 12345, you can create your subscribers using 
12345400, 12345401, 12345402 etc. However, you're trying to model a use 
case on the CE which it's not exactly designed for.

> - Can calls be transfered to another subscriber? Currently that is not
> working in my setup but that may well be because I have overlooked
> something.

REFER is not enabled by default, I guess you're getting a "4xx Not 
Implemented", right? You'd need to add REFER to the line

   if(is_method("INVITE|ACK|CANCEL|BYE|OPTIONS|PRACK|UPDATE"))

in kamailio.cfg.tt2 (or better copy it to kamailio.cfg.customtt.tt2 and 
modify it there) in /etc/ngcp-config/templates/etc/kamailio/proxy/.

It's not enabled by default for billing reasons, as a subscriber might 
get referred to some premium number, without having its end device 
prompt for that. This is something where you need to make sure the 
clients you're using are playing well with these sort of things, 
otherwise you might make your users very unhappy if you have fraudulent 
users on the platform.

> I have seen the post about "ring groups" and that parallel forking is
> not possible. The view was that this will be part of a PBX module you
> will release? But if there really are almost no PBX features, then what
> exactly would we use it for other than as an SBC? End users will want
> those features, or at least a basic set of them? I had not understood
> from the onset that this is not part of it and embarked on it with the
> end goal being the PRO version. But at that price I expected something
> with all the bells and whistles of a fully fledged PBX. If it really

This is not a PBX, it's a Class5 soft-switch used to serve hundreds of 
thousands of subscribers, and it does this very well for the purpose 
it's designed for. PBX functionality is an add-on to the PRO, and for 
price of the PRO, it gets quite attractive compared to competitive 
solutions. Maybe you're rather looking into a pure PBX solution like 
Freeswitch or Asterisk instead, which might fit your purpose better?

> only does what the CE version does, but with more redundancy and prepaid
> billing then I'd have a very hard time selling the concept to the powers
> that be - it really just does routing because the other functions would
> not really be useful without having more features?

You might want to get in touch with our sales team for a presentation of 
the PRO. It comes with a fax solution, mobile clients, unified 
communication clients based on cusax (a combined SIP/XMPP approach with 
just works, compared to SIP/SIMPLE) and add-ons like hosted PBX.

Andreas