Author: Marvin Berger

In 2008, The Radicati Group forecasted that nearly 75% of corporate phone lines will use voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) within the next two years.

No doubt an announcement on September 25 that will fuel that growth was that two major telecom companies have partnered, Digium and Skype.

Skype, with 338 million customers, allows users to make unlimited voice calls over the Internet to other Skype users without charge. However, Skype uses a proprietary protocol for call transmission and does not support the industry standard, vendor-independent Session Initiation Protocol (SIP).

Digium is the force behind Asterisk, the most widely used, open source telephony software. Digium also provides Asterisk Business Edition and Switchvox IP PBX software to power a broad family of products for small, medium and large businesses.

Digium announced the beta version of Skype for Asterisk, which allows the integration of Skype functionality with Asterisk software and enables customers to make, receive and transfer Skype calls from within their Asterisk phone systems. Skype for Asterisk is an add-on driver module and uses existing hardware.

This integration means that users will be able to make and receive Skype calls through their Asterisk phone systems, transferring, conferencing and otherwise handling those calls as with ordinary PSTN (public switched telephone network) calls. It allows users to save money on inbound calling solutions such as free click-to-call from a Web site, as well as receive inbound calling from the PSTN through Skype's online numbers. It also provides low rates for calling landline and mobile phones around the world.

Skype for Asterisk lets users create Skype IDs that can be used as "global 800 numbers" with incoming calls being handed off to call centers, voice mail or conferences by Asterisk. Skype also allows an option for using Asterisk's least-cost call routing whereby outgoing calls can be routed via Skype whenever it is less expensive.

"Working together with Skype, our goal is to help businesses boost productivity and reap the rewards of feature-rich telephony software, all while saving a substantial amount of money," said Danny Windham, CEO of Digium

Mavenspire is a Digium Select reseller.

When the software becomes commercially released, Mavenspire will provide it. Pricing has not yet been established.