Technology
Every technology a phone system rests on, explained
35 articles, 50,765 words: what each technology is and where it came from, where it goes wrong in real installations, how BitVoice does it, why that fits, and what has been tested and what has not.
Phone system
The calls themselves: how they are set up, routed, answered and carried to the rest of the world.
How calls are routed
Where inbound calls go and which trunk outbound calls take, with a diagram, a simulator and a check that tries every situation.
Read the article · 8 min Phone systemDesk-phone provisioning
Set up desk phones automatically by MAC address, with busy lamps, hot desking and paging.
Read the article · 7 min Phone systemLegacy protocols
Connecting older gear that never spoke SIP, from H.323 trunks to Cisco Skinny phones and MGCP gateways.
Read the article · 7 min Phone systemMenus, schedules and the front door
Auto-attendant menus, opening hours and holidays, day and night toggles, a dial-by-name directory, dial-in and hotel wake-up calls.
Read the article · 7 min Phone systemTrunks and carriers
How a phone system reaches the outside world, over SIP or IAX2, with registration, failover and signed caller ID.
Read the article · 7 min Phone systemSIP
The signalling language that rings phones, sets up calls and tears them down across the internet.
Read the article · 7 min Phone systemVoicemail
Mailboxes with greetings, message-waiting lamps, email delivery, and transcripts and triage when AI is switched on.
Read the article · 6 min Phone systemThe browser phone
Turn any browser into a phone, with encrypted audio built on BitVoice's own ICE, DTLS and SRTP.
Read the article · 7 minMedia
What travels once a call is up: sound, video, fax and the codecs between them.
Codecs and conversion
How sound is turned into data on a call, the codecs BitVoice speaks, and how it converts between any two.
Read the article · 7 min MediaConference rooms and video
Audio conference rooms with PINs and HD mixing, and video rooms that switch, grid or forward every camera.
Read the article · 7 min MediaFax over IP
Why fax struggles over the internet, how T.38 fixes it, and how BitVoice sends and receives faxes as PDFs.
Read the article · 7 min MediaISDN PRI and BRI on telephony cards
Digital ISDN lines (T1, E1 and BRI) through the separate bitvoice-dahdi program, with names, redirecting and network transfers.
Read the article · 7 min MediaNAT traversal
Why calls lose their audio behind routers, and how STUN, TURN and ICE get the sound through.
Read the article · 6 min MediaCall recording
Recording calls with a payment-card pause, consent announcements by region, retention, legal holds and offsite archive.
Read the article · 7 min MediaRTP, SRTP and the media engine
How the actual sound of a call travels, how it is encrypted, and how BitVoice carries and measures it.
Read the article · 7 min MediaSS7, MFC-R2 and E&M trunks
Carrier signalling on telephony cards: SS7 ISUP link sets, MFC-R2 in nine country variants, and E&M with Feature Group D and CAMA.
Read the article · 7 minContact centre
Queues, dialling out, recording and every channel customers use.
One inbox for web chat, WhatsApp, Messenger and texts
One inbox for your website's chat box, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and business texting through ten SMS providers.
Read the article · 6 min Contact centreThe outbound dialer
Preview, progressive, power and predictive dialling, with answering-machine detection and do-not-call lists.
Read the article · 7 min Contact centreQueues and the contact centre
Call queues with distribution strategies, agent penalties, callbacks, supervisors, a live wallboard and call insight.
Read the article · 7 minDevelopers
For the people who build on a phone system: Asterisk's interfaces, scripts and the API.
The REST API, events and configuration as code
Every screen is a REST call; live events, webhooks, tokens, Terraform and Git configure BitVoice from code.
Read the article · 6 min DevelopersAsterisk compatibility
Run the AGI scripts, ARI apps, AMI tools and AudioSocket bots you wrote for Asterisk, unchanged.
Read the article · 7 min DevelopersCall scripts in JavaScript and Lua
Write routing logic and whole calls in JavaScript or Lua, sandboxed, time-limited, never able to drop a call.
Read the article · 7 minAI
Speech to text on the server, assistants you choose, and facts that need no model.
AI receptionists, transfer briefings and plain-words setup
An AI receptionist that says it is automated, answers from facts you approved, and always reaches a person.
Read the article · 6 min AIFacts and summaries without a language model
Rules read a call for what happened, where and who is hurt, every fact shown with the sentence it came from.
Read the article · 7 min AISpeech to text on the server itself
BitVoice runs whisper on your own server, so transcripts, live 911 ones included, never leave the building.
Read the article · 7 minOperations
Running it: security, the company directory, several servers, updates and moving in.
Several servers as one phone system
Run two or more servers on a shared PostgreSQL database so calls carry on when a server stops and a shared address moves to a running one.
Read the article · 8 min OperationsCompany directory from LDAP and Active Directory
Read your directory, turn people into extensions and groups into ring groups, and let staff sign in with their directory password.
Read the article · 7 min OperationsHosting other organisations, and a cluster of servers
Run many phone systems on one server, each walled off, and run several servers as one for failover.
Read the article · 7 min OperationsMoving from FreePBX, Asterisk, 3CX and the rest
Import a whole FreePBX backup, or 3CX, Cisco, Avaya and Mitel exports; see every change first and undo it.
Read the article · 6 min OperationsRunning BitVoice
One binary, one-command installers, signed updates with go back, Let's Encrypt, a Health page, SIP trace, metrics and a call generator.
Read the article · 9 min OperationsSecurity
TLS, SRTP, fail-to-ban, a toll-fraud guard, two-step sign-in, single sign-on and an audit log, locked down by default.
Read the article · 8 minPublic safety
The lab and design-partner track: 911 call handling, radio dispatch and NG911 Core Services. Not certified.
NG911 Core Services
A lab-track core: ESRP routing, ECRF and LoST, LVF address validation, a BCF with STIR/SHAKEN and media checks, LIS, i3 logging and a forest guide.
Read the article · 8 min Public safetyNG911 call handling (the 911 profile)
A lab-track PSAP profile: NENA i3 calls, PIDF-LO location, HELD, ALI spill, CAMA, call-takers, transfers, answer-time reports and EIDO to CAD.
Read the article · 8 min Public safetyThe radio dispatch console
A lab-track console: P25 talkgroups over the ISSI, radio over IP, IMBE voice, emergencies, patches, simulselect, unit names and positions.
Read the article · 8 min Public safetyText, TTY, real-time text and caller video to 911
A lab-track reach for 911: TTY, real-time text, text to 911 over MSRP, and caller video and photos by link with evidence hashing.
Read the article · 8 minRead it in the product too
Every screen of BitVoice has a Help button that opens its chapter of the manual, the same manual that is on this site.