alright so my parents have a small business with a single analog phone line and no real use for internet service at that location. Upgrading the current analog phone service to broadband + VoIP seems more complicated and pricey than it would ultimately be worth, although they are definitely looking for a solution to weed out wrong numbers/telemarketing calls/faqs/etc.
I would love to be able to setup CallButler or something similar, especially if it could be implemented via an analog modem running on one of my old machines I have laying around or an analog gateway/FXO device
anyone have any idea how I would go about setting something like this up?
You might really want to compare the cost of basic verizon or time warner to the cost of a analog phone line.
If you do get an internet connection you are looking at something like 3cx or asterisk for the software to handle the calls. If you want to stay with the analog line, you would need a PC with a PCI analog line card in it and then run Asterisk or 3cx on that. A modem wont work to handle voice and phone calls. Only modulate data to analog and back (ie. MoDeM).
Oh. One solution I just setup with these boxes that turn Analog into VoIP and allow it to register with a gateway but they are pricey for a small setup like you are looking for: http://www.multitech.com/PRODUCTS/Families/MultiVOIP/
Basically, to auto answer calls and process them you need an auto attendant type solution which typically is a gateway or PBX that will run you like $1,000+ (ie. http://www.phonemerchants.com/comdialdebut.html).
A) Its ported through a VoIP provider and the number comes into the site via IP and into a PBX system to handle calls
or
B) Its a analog line that a PBX system like asterisk needs a Analog Line card for the PC to interface with the POTS phone line given by the company to your site or find a MultiVOIP like product that can convert the Analog to IP and interface with your IP PBX
Whether its IP or POTS, a phone number is a phone number.
the do not call list is useless. Too many loopholes, caveats, ifs ands buts. They mostly only want to keep the phone for the directory presence but obviously when you dial the number it cant just be dead
I was actually thinking along the lines of running the phone line into an analog gateway pci card and running open source callbutler on the system. Will this work?