P2P Meets PSTN, With Bellster

flinderhans writes "Jeff Pulver, the guy who started Free World Dialup (free VoIP network) and had the germ of the idea that turned into Vonage, has launched a P2P network called Bellster that allows users to share their private lines to make calls anywhere on the public-switched telephone network. Interesting stuff, even if it doesn't look quite ready for prime-time."

Comments

I remember something like this for bbses

[krudler]

using a phone line on a bbs to call *another* bbs that was out of your long distance range. Cool oldschool stuff :)

No thanks

[MarkRose]

I'm a fan of the P2P concept, but I'm not sure I'd want to be involved anonymously -- after all, I definitely do not want someone using my phone to make obscene or harassing phone calls.

Re:No thanks

[LWATCDR]

Not only that but what if someone hacks the system and uses your phone to make a long distance phone call? What if a telemarketer outside of your country uses your phone?
I see a lot of issues with this. Too bad it is a neat idea.

Is your server running?

[Tackhead]

> has launched a P2P network called Bellster that allows users to share their private lines to make calls anywhere on the public-switched telephone network.

f0ne: *RING*
d00d: Hello?
k1ddi3: Hi, is your server running?
d00d: Yeah.
k1ddi3: Well, you'd better catch it!
d00d: *slam*
k1ddi3: PWN3D!

Won't Work For Me

[AnonymousCactus]

I live in a place with very few high-speed connections, hardly any Internet users, and a max of 1000 people are a toll-free call away - if I have to go tit-for-tat I'll never make any love to pay for what I take because no one will want to call anyone in my area. In general, does a tit-for-tat model make sense when P2P introduces geographical or other dependencies? Does it make more sense to credit an open line rather than actually allowing someone to call using it? How do you prevent fraud in a system like that? (i.e. my phone is in iowa, you don't want to use it, i swear)

Critique

[Dejohn]

This seems like a great concept. It's a great use of current technology to subvert the big phone companies. When I first read about it, I thought to myself "wow! this is going to become HUGE!" Then I realized that there are some serious problems to be overcome, such as

• Privacy. I could pick up my phone line and listen to your conversation with Grandma
• Currently, anyone who wants to hook up needs to run the whole Asterisk server. I'm sure someone will write a small little client that interfaces with some cheap hardware eventually
• Potential for abuses: dialing long distance numbers from your line, making obscene or harassing calls, etc. As the "owner" of a phone line, I'm theoretically liable for all its use

So, while I think this is really an awesome adaptation of the technology we have, and certainly a great perspective of what Asterisk is capable of, it'll be a while before this sort of things becomes mainstream and people want to hook up to it.

NO Privacy

[CharlieHedlin]

In the FAQ it talks briefly of privacy, saying there isn't any.

I have an Asterisk PBX at home, and it is very easy to set the system up to log and record every call. Imagine if I joined Bellster (which I don't plan to, my VoIP services are already insanely cheap) what type of privacy violations I could commit? Granted it would be illeagal to listen to or record a conversation without either parties concent, who would know?

Re:Costs

[ibpooks]

Also, the US is the only place i've lived where local calls were free.

They usually aren't exactly free. Typically if you read the fine print, there's some deal where the monthly service will include 400 or 500 local calls "free", and then you pay through the nose for additional local calls. I would bet these clauses are there to specifically prevent a re-seller situation like this. An open public line could probably hit the 500 call mark rather quickly.

No Friggin Way...

[nweaver]

P2P networks like this are built on foundations of trust, a foundation which does not exist.

Beyond the toll dialing (which could be prevented by proper configuration of the PBX software), the bigger concerns are leechers (long distance is a huge cost for advertisers), scum (nice, anonymous, robo-dialers with prerecorded spam messages), and tapping (it might be worth it to set up a few PBXs just to listen in on others conversation!).

what if you pay for minute on local calls?

[spectro]

The idea is great for the US where you have flat rate local calls, however I see it will very diffictult to find somebody volunteering their phone lines in South America or any country where greedy phone companies like Spain's Telefonica run the show. In there you pay per minute for you local calls and I can see somebody's phone bill growing exponentially.

Re:"Free" with a big cost

[mwilliamson]

You can run asterisk on a linksys wrt54g, linked with a sipura voip adapter and that is all you should need. $200 and you're there.