Asterisk: An Open Source VOIP Solution in Indian Railways

Railway Board has issued a policy  for the use of Open Source Asterisk Software for uniformity of IP Exchanges in Indian Railways.

Asterisk is a free and open source framework issued under GNU General Public License version 2 for building communications applications. 

Asterisk can work as 

• IP PBX
• Voicemail Server
• Conference Bridge
• Call Center
• IVR Server

Asterisk can turn an ordinary computer into a communications server. Asterisk powers IP PBX systems, VoIP gateways, conference servers and other custom solutions. It is used by small businesses, large businesses, call centres, carriers and government agencies worldwide. 

Indian Railway has around 1067 Telephone Exchanges for its operational and administrative use. These are all proprietary based Exchanges. This is causing Vendor Lock-in and huge costs in terms of deployment and maintenance. 

As of now more that 75 exchanges have been migrated to Asterisk and works are in progress in most of the railways. 

The advantages of using Open Source Asterisk is 

1. We need to learn only one software, ie Asterisk, Open Source
2. No cost on Software.
3. No AMC cost. No maintenance required.
4. Only common-off-the-shelf servers to be used for exchange. No more proprietary hardware.
5. Open Standards - Use IP phones and gateways of different OEM vendors. They work together.
6. Standard exchange architecture for small as well as big ones – Achieve uniformity.