Digium has kicked off planning for AstriCon, the Asterisk Open Source Conference and Exhibition. The event, now in its ninth year, will be held in Atlanta, Georgia from October 23-25, 2012 at the Sheraton Atlanta Hotel. Digium is the creator and corporate sponsor of the Asterisk project, the most widely used open source platform for creating custom communication solutions. Speaker topic submissions are open, and the conference organizers are soliciting talk concepts for 2012. Digium invites those who would like to speak at AstriCon to submit information for consideration by May 1, 2012 at http://www.astricon.net/2012/speaking.aspx.

Digium introduces the G100 and G200, the first in a family of cost-effective VoIP gateways that simplify the process of deploying converged media networks. Built on a powerful combination of the Asterisk open source communications engine and a state-of-the-art embedded platform, the new gateways provide the best value for Asterisk communications solutions.

Digium’s gateways are built to support both TDM-to-SIP and SIP-to-TDM applications. In a TDM-to-SIP deployment, the gateway significantly reduces operating costs by connecting a legacy business phone system with dynamic SIP trunking services. SIP-to-TDM deployments use the gateway to connect a modern SIP communications system with T1/E1/PRI service from legacy carriers.

Digium introduces a new family of high-definition IP phones. They are the first that are engineered to fully leverage the power of Asterisk, the world’s most widely adopted open source communications software, and Switchvox, Digium’s award-winning unified communications system. With Digium technology on both the server and the phone, users will benefit from the best possible performance, unprecedented integration and a uniquely customizable phone system.

Asterisk has always been about flexibility, allowing integrators and developers to create highly customized solutions. Likewise, Digium phones include an app engine with a simple yet powerful JavaScript API that lets programmers create custom apps that run on the phones. They aren’t simply XML pages; Digium phone apps can interface directly with core phone features.

Digium announces the availability of the TE820 Octal-Span digital card. This new high-density solution compliments Digium’s existing broad suite of telephony card offerings designed specifically for Asterisk-based communications systems. The TE820 enables Asterisk integrators and OEMs to build large scale telephony deployments that are both high performance and cost-effective.

Asterisk is the most widely used open source software for creating business phone systems and other communications applications. The combination of Digium hardware and Asterisk software provides a cost-effective platform for building numerous communications solutions, from PBX systems and VoIP gateways to IVR servers, call centers and complete unified communications suites. The TE820 supports up to 192 channels (in T1/J1 mode) or 240 channels (in E1 mode) and is available with or without hardware echo cancellation.

Digium releases Asterisk 10. Asterisk is a communications platform that allows developers to create powerful business phone systems and unified communications solutions. Since its introduction 12 years ago, Asterisk has been used, free of charge, in nearly every country of the world to power telephone and other communications systems. It has been downloaded millions of times, including two million last year alone, establishing Asterisk as the most popular open source telephony engine.

The most important new feature in Asterisk 10 is its wide-band media engine. Digium has replaced Asterisk’s telephony-grade media engine with a more advanced one, providing support for studio-quality audio and a nearly unlimited number of codecs. By supporting high and ultra high-definition voice, Asterisk can now be used to power communications applications that would have otherwise required specialized or expensive equipment and service in order to convey nuances in speech or emotion. Digium has also updated Asterisk’s media support for Asterisk 10, with several new codecs, including Skype’s SILK codec, 32kHz Speex support and pass-through support for CELT.

Digium is making plans for the eighth annual AstriCon, the Asterisk User Conference and Expo and the event of choice for hundreds of technical pros working with the world’s leading open source communications platform. This year, from October 26-28, AstriCon will come to the Westin Westminster in Denver, Colorado. In addition to opening registration today, Digium is now accepting submissions for speaker opportunities at www.AstriCon.net. Topics are open, but past sessions have focused on basic and advanced Asterisk tutorials, IP telephony security, call center and enterprise case studies, and product training.

Digium introduces Asterisk Essentials, an online training curriculum for Asterisk users. This virtual training class includes more than six hours of interactive content focusing on the fundamentals required to install and configure a basic Asterisk system. Step-by-step technical examples, best-practice recommendations and Asterisk tips help application developers and systems administrators gain expertise to build communications systems for their companies or customers.

Asterisk Essentials provides numerous examples and teaches developers how to implement their own Asterisk solutions using the core interfaces-configuration files, dial plan scripts and the command line interface. Students will learn to install Asterisk; configure IP phones and VoIP services; create automated attendants; configure voicemail and company directories; set up call queues; and debug Asterisk systems.

Digium is adding a new listing category to AsteriskExchange dedicated to custom applications for Switchvox, the company’s line of VoIP business phone systems. Switchvox provides an easy way to create custom applications that integrate the communications system with business processes to improve productivity. Individuals and companies who are already developing for Switchvox are encouraged to promote and potentially sell their applications in this new category on AsteriskExchange. To jump-start the development and promotion of the Switchvox Solutions category and the AsteriskExchange, the standard fees are being waived for all Asterisk and Switchvox-related listings.

Digium caps off a year marked by strong growth in the use of Asterisk and substantial technical advances in the product. Contributions from the open source community matched Digium’s investment in Asterisk over the past year. To date, more than 9,800 people have contributed code to Asterisk, including more than 200 who worked on Asterisk 1.8. After releasing version 1.8 in October, the momentum continued later that month when the company also announced a new open source project, Asterisk SCF. Enthusiasm for Asterisk among users, including developers, resellers, integrators and systems administrators, also increased as they downloaded the software more than two million times in 2010.

Digium launches the Asterisk Scalable Communications Framework. Asterisk SCF is a framework that allows developers to create real-time communications applications that include voice, video and text and that meet the demands of a full range of uses, from embedded applications to enterprise and carrier solutions. Asterisk SCF is architected to provide the highest levels of availability, scalability, extensibility, fault-tolerance and performance.

Asterisk SCF will be delivered as a system of distributed components that can be deployed in clusters on a single system or on many systems, transparently. The Asterisk SCF platform will support, as a part of its basic architecture, the full range of real-time IP communications, including video, multi-channel wideband and ultra-wideband audio, chat, desktop sharing and other media types that may arise in the future.

Digium announces the release of Asterisk 1.8, a significant update to the software that developers, integrators, resellers and others around the world use to create customized, feature-rich and cost-effective business phone systems. Asterisk 1.8 includes more than 200 enhancements, including new security features, integration with IPv6 and extensive additions to ISDN-BRI functionality. Asterisk 1.8 is designated as a Long Term Support release, indicating four years of support from Digium. Hundreds of members of the open source Asterisk community will take an in-depth look at the software's new capabilities at next week's AstriCon Conference & Expo, which runs from October 26-28 near Washington, D.C.

Dialogic has met the program requirements to become a Digium Interoperability Partner by completing the certification of the Dialogic 1000 Media Gateway Series and the Dialogic 2000 Media Gateway Series for use by the Asterisk community. Digium's Interoperability Partners have products that are complementary to and interface with the open source Asterisk telephony platform. These products interact with Asterisk through a SIP standards-based interface and are now certified by Digium for interoperability with Asterisk Business Edition.

TELES is now offering ASTERISK-based PBX software with its family of VoIPBOX gateways to provide enterprises with a compact, fully featured, energy efficient, and environmentally friendly solution that is easy to install and simple to use.

Initially, the integrated PBX will be available on the VoIPBOX BRI and the VoIPBOX GSM products but will soon be incorporated in most of the VoIPBOX family of gateways offering interfaces to BRI, FXS, FXO, GSM, UMTS, and VoIP telephony. Integration into VoIPBOX GSM will also enable customers to benefit from additional cost reductions by converting expensive landline-to-mobile calls into more cost effective mobile-to-mobile calls.

Digium announces the 10th anniversary of the creation of Asterisk, the world’s leading open source telephony engine and toolkit. Asterisk was created by Mark Spencer who is the founder and CTO of Digium, the company that created, leads and coordinates Asterisk. Digium will be celebrating Asterisk’s 10 year anniversary at the AstriCon conference taking place from October 13-15, 2009, at the Renaissance Glendale Hotel and Spa near Phoenix, Arizona. More about this annual event is available at http://www.astricon.net.

Digium and Incendonet announce that companies using Asterisk for their IP-PBX communications needs can now add speech recognition-based solutions in a plug and play manner to improve customer service, reduce operating costs and increase mobile worker productivity with Incendonet’s SpeechBridge.