Asterisk adventures, and the DECT gap.

A customer called me a while back, requesting whether I could help him set up asterisk. Since I hadn't previously played with asterisk, we agreed that I'd try out stuff, and then do a demo setup, so that he could decide whether that is okay for his needs.

So I bought me a Linksys SPA-3102 ATA (with one FXO and one FXS port) and a Linksys SPA-921 IP phone, and started experimenting.

Didn't take me long to figure out that the SPA-921 works, but that if I want to use a company-wide directory (which was a requirement for that customer), I have to use a Linksys proprietary protocol, which Asterisk obviously doesn't support. Someone then told me that Snom's hardware phones have LDAP support in their hardware phones; so I bought me the Snom 300 as well, and played a bit with the system.

After experimenting for about two weeks or so, alltogether, I've now got a demo setup that fulfills most of his requirements, and I can show why others can't easily be implemented. Which is cool.

Afterwards, I'll be stuck with an ATA and two IP phones that I have no immediate use for at the office, so I was thinking of taking them home and using them there. We've got way too many phones at home anyway (one upstairs, one downstairs, a fax, and a DECT basestation with no less than four handsets), so adding the ability to call eachother might be useful.

Except that I can't seem to find a DECT basestation that appeals to me. The one we have doesn't have VoIP, so that'll need replacement. Just connecting it to the ATA could work, but then transferring a call from a regular phone to one of the DECT handsets would be troublesome, at best; what I would prefer is the ability to give each of my DECT handsets a separate asterisk extension; in effect, a DECT - SIP bridge.

What I've found so far in DECT basestations that allow me to somehow link the DECT phones to a computer, is appaling.

• At first sight, the most interesting option is the Siemens Gigaset M34 USB, a USB dongle that speaks DECT. Unfortunately, there are no Linux drivers, as far as I could see. So this one is right out.
• There are several manufacturers who sell DECT base stations that speak SIP and/or H.323. Most of those, however, want to be a PBX as well; this gets me the same problem as the one above where transferring a call between a DECT handset and an "other" phone is troublesome. Some of the more expensive ones allow you to have two VoIP connections at the same time (<sarcasm>whoa!</sarcasm>), and I've seen one that allows to configure multiple SIP accounts, but it didn't say whether I could configure a SIP account as belonging to one specific handset -- which is what I'd really need. Most of them also come with at least one non-optional handset, but I'm not looking for more handsets...
• There are also a number of DECT - SIP gateways that are really built for connecting multiple handsets to a VoIP PBX, and are really what I'm looking for. Unfortunately, the prices I've seen suggest that these are only economically viable in case you're working with a large corporate DECT setup, such as the one they use at the hospital where my dad used to work. I don't feel like paying €1100+ for DECT connectivity.

So now basically I'm left to conclude that there is a gap in what's available in DECT basestation products; one that allows me to connect a low number of DECT handsets to a network through SIP, and has nothing more. It'd be cool if one existed...