Cape Town to respond to disasters using Asterisk

An emergency management centre in Cape Town will soon be using open source VoIP telephony to deal with and respond to disasters in the region. Cape Town-based Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) gurus, Connection-Telecom, recently implemented an Asterisk solution at the Provincial Emergency Management Centre based at Tygerberg Hospital.

"Our side of it is the control centre for the disaster management exercise, where the decision-makers and their support people are deciding what to do about a situation," says Steve Davies, co-founder and "chief stuff officer" at Connection-Telecom.

"The big driver for them was the necessity to keep a recording of everything that has happened," says Davies. "On traditional systems, call recording is an expensive add-on. In Asterisk, we're able to do it on the platform itself as we go along."

"They are also expecting to be using a lot of conference calling, which is also built into Asterisk."

While headlines normally focus on the cost-savings potential of VOIP, especially between branches over long distances, this call management solution reveals Asterisk's other core features.

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