This is more of a political/economical question. $10 per license that Digium
charges - majority goes to VoiceAge for their intellectual property licensing.
Though they, or intellectual property patent owners can argue that lot of time
has been spend behind their development etc., grants them the divine right to
charge a licensing fee (and that's fine with me), the Open Source community
can equally claim greater time spent, but passing away the software as open
source/free to use, free knowledge etc.
Having said this, I would have preferred g729 codec to be free for all - but
out of respect for the developers of g729, I'm not going to whine (though I
want to like a little kid).
The problem I am facing is that a number of carriers I am potentially signing
up with and doing testing, allow g729 only as they have proprietary switch
(hardware and software) for which they have made a considerable financial
investment.
Though I do not mind spending the money for about 30 - 50 licenses for
concurrent calls --- I want to hear from you folks, whether g729 is worth the
bang for the buck. The more I am getting involved with other Telcos that have
proprietary hardware VOIP switch and have excellent rates with excellent
quality, costing less than a cent per minute - is pushing me more towards g729.
So! The $300-$500 dollar question:
Would you avoid g729 if you could?
If so why?
Are there TRULY FREE implementations of g729?
(I could not find any for Asterisk)
Would love to hear all your ponders!
Cheers!
