Michael Tupper, Ian Darwin: Thanks to both of you for providing me unique perspectives! There is a famous Chinese saying, "When in doubt, ask 3 subject matter experts"... or something like that :). I have found the comfort and peace I was looking for in justifying my costs :). See... my problem is not money... but the question... do I REALLY need to spend that money... and the product and/or service that I need, do I REALLY NEED IT... ??!! And if the answer is yes, I don't mind spending the bux. Sometimes (in most cases) its best not to be more stubborn than the machine. Of course if I have a free choice, I would prefer that.
Michael: " In the professional carrier wholesale market, SIP/g729 has become the de facto for VoIP interconnects. " -- I think you hit it dead in the Bulls Eye! After speaking with a bunch of carriers - and these are Tier 1 carriers -- it appears truly, that g729 is the de facto. Not necessarily it is the best technology - but simply because major Tier 1 carriers backed up by the Mighty US Dollars (Might Cannuck Dollars catching up) are using the proprietary switch that utilizes g729. Ian as per your quote, " once you pay the Danegeld, you never get rid of the Dane ", I regret to inform that you are terribly CORRECT :). It is not my intention to foster them, but it is my intention to make money with reasonable investment. A lot of people in the open source community will disagree with the licensing of g729 - but given the circumstances that one wishes to inter-connect with Tier 1 carriers, a $10 per license I believe is reasonable, when you compare the overall cost of other g729 solutions. Now looks like I have to balance the best of both worlds... and in my situation for inter-connectivity with the carriers, as per business endeavors, I'm left with only 1 choice given the circumstances. When compared to actually purchasing a switch capable of g729 - I'm looking at BIG BUX. If you want to purchase a Cisco switch, then looking you are looking at even bigger bux! The cost of the licenses I am happy to bite the bullet as I will be able to recuperate the cost within a month. I think it will only be a matter of time before the Tier 1 carriers will embrace and implement 100% free open source codecs. So, just in case any of you fall in my shoes of making a business decision, below are the comparison for g729 solutions: A 16 port Quintum Switch ~ $2,900 US A 12 channel Cisco Switch ~ $2,400 US A 20 channel License G729 ~ $200 US Asterisk Voip Server with 20 seat G729 enabled ~ Priceless For everything else, there is MasterCard! So I swiped my MasterCard and got what I need :) Oh sorry! Make that Visa. Cheers!
