Open source office phones get Skype

Alabama telephony company Digium announced its flagship product Asterisk, open source PBX (Private Branch Exchange) system, has released a beta version of Skype for Asterisk.

Since Asterisk is designed for commodity PC hardware, inclusion of one of the world's most popular consumer VoIP clients seems a natural fit. The add-on channel driver module integrates Skype VoIP calls into the Asterisk structure. Skype calls can be made, received, transferred, routed to voice mail or automated menus, and conferenced without the need for any additional hardware.

The beta registry is at the Astricon site, and will initially be of limited scope. A second phase will be rolled out to a larger testing group at a later date.