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P2P Meets PSTN, With Bellster

Posted by michael on Mon Jan 24, 2005 05:08 PM
from the marsgram dept.
Communications The Internet
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."
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  • I remember something like this for bbses (Score:3, Informative)

    by krudler (836743) on Monday January 24 2005, @05:09PM (#11461478)
    using a phone line on a bbs to call *another* bbs that was out of your long distance range. Cool oldschool stuff :)
    • UUCP anyone? Surely there are a few other's here who had bang-path addresses?
    • using a phone line on a bbs to call *another* bbs that was out of your long distance range. Cool oldschool stuff :)

      Back in the good old days I remember dialing into the local university and using their outbound modem lines to dial BBSs all over the country on my friend's father's professor account. That was fun. I even ran a BBS for a while that participated in Fidonet, which was a lot of fun. I would dialup a node in Arizona where I picked up mail feeds from late at night while the long distance rates
  • Germ of an idea? Slashdot editors win again!

  • No thanks (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MarkRose (820682) on Monday January 24 2005, @05:10PM (#11461487) Homepage
    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 (Score:5, Insightful)

      by LWATCDR (28044) on Monday January 24 2005, @05:24PM (#11461641) Homepage Journal
      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.
      • Well, in thge US, you would prevent this by using a 2nd line and not having a long-distance carrier. If somebody wants to use my line to call 10-10-IDIOT, I have no problem with that.

        I think you would have a strong case for common carrier status if you provided a dedicated line for this purpose. Of course, the legal bill to prove it could be astronomical.

        This is very similar to the early days of UUCP/USENET. Yes, times have changed, but if I get some time, I'll throw a box at this.

      • I know it's a lot to ask but try reading the article for a change. It's all based on you having an asterisk system and sharing through that. It's pretty easy to prevent outgoing long distance calls in your config file and if you can't keep your asterisk box secure maybe you should reconsider having one. Regarding the telemarketer thing... That's the beauty of this being P2P if you aren't sharing your own line you don't get to make many calls either, besides in the quantities telemarketers make calls it's j

  • Great idea (Score:3, Interesting)

    by chris09876 (643289) on Monday January 24 2005, @05:11PM (#11461493)
    This really sounds like it could be useful. Phone companies are such a horrible monopoly... this could be a good start in getting rid of them while transitioning off their service. It might be somewhat inconvenient though... if you want to use your phone line, but someone else ties it up for awhile. I wonder if they have a solution to that problem
    • The problem I see here is that the Bells have been playing the 'We have a legal right to profit off the masses' game for even longer than the record industry. They see people taking advantage of this and you're going to start getting people hammered with 'unreasonable usage' fees like customers of some of the less scrupulous ISPs. They're going to start hammering lobbiests and bribes into whatever niches they can find on federal, state, and local levels.

      The makers have even invited comparison to 'Illegal'

  • Is your server running? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Tackhead (54550) on Monday January 24 2005, @05:11PM (#11461495)
    > 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!

  • I used it (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I called my [garbled] and we [unintelligable] about the &6&^7^7^9&&&[NO CARRIER]
  • I use VoIP and cellphones because i want to avoid the cost of a regular phone line.

    While this is an interesting idea, i cant see how it could save me money, and i can see how the quality would be poorer.

    Also, the US is the only place i've lived where local calls were free. In the UK i could get cheaper calls to the US than to my next door neighbor at certain times of day.

    • Re:Costs (Score:5, Informative)

      by ibpooks (127372) on Monday January 24 2005, @05:31PM (#11461727) Homepage

      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.

  • Why do you need a PBX? Yes, I suppose it's easiest to do this using a PBX that supports VoIP, but that's not the only way. Couldn't you do the same thing with a voice modem? It's also pretty simple to interface a sound card to a phone line.
    • Well, you need software to do it. And the asterisk PBX software does it. My zaptel clone is simply an Intel voice modem, and it works great with Asterisk. Asterisk is free BTW, and it runs on linux, *BSD, and OS X.

  • Won't Work For Me (Score:4, Interesting)

    by AnonymousCactus (810364) on Monday January 24 2005, @05:21PM (#11461614)
    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)

  • http://voipstore.pulver.com/product_info.php?prod u cts_id=35 [pulver.com]

    I haven't gotten one.. yet. I'm curious how it will handle NAT'd public WiFi spots when you can't poke a hole through the NAT/Firewall. Apparently it still works if it's only NAT'd once (multiple NAT's within NAT's cause the phone to fail I read). Maybe it goes into Poll mode or something.

    Still, cool either way.
  • The idea must suck if it's being compared to a germ.
  • This is just the repackaging of ideas that were being worked on about ten years ago. And, it sounds very much like something a company I worked with before was wanting to do as well (except it wasn't free). It will be interesting to see how well this develops. Could be fun to play with.

    Hmm.. I wonder.. ISPs get carrier exemptions so they are not responsible for what their customers do. Phone companies also get carrier exemptions, except I believe they have to file for common carrier status (not sure). I wo

  • Critique (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Dejohn (164452) on Monday January 24 2005, @05:27PM (#11461693) Homepage
    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 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CharlieHedlin (102121) on Monday January 24 2005, @05:27PM (#11461694)
    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?
    • You could set Asterisk to play a prerecorded message that the conversation might be listened to and/or recorded by a third party, this could be quite interesting. As long as you tell someone you're invading their privacy if they still go ahead with it all the more fun for you.
  • Who would want to route their calls through some random stanger's phone. Is there any practical way to keep the calls from being recorded and the phone numbers from being captured by this third party?

  • No Friggin Way... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nweaver (113078) on Monday January 24 2005, @05:34PM (#11461767) Homepage
    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? (Score:3, Informative)

    by spectro (80839) on Monday January 24 2005, @05:35PM (#11461776) Homepage
    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.
  • Napster, Bellster, Dogster, Crapster, Slapster..

    Seems like everyone and his uncle is coming up with a ****-ster type site.

    Heh.

  • what FWD used to be (Score:3, Interesting)

    by austad (22163) on Monday January 24 2005, @05:44PM (#11461865) Homepage
    This is what FWD used to be back in 2000 or 2001. I don't think it ever made it past the beta stage. It wasn't P2P persay, but anyone using the network shared their phone line to make calls in their local calling area.

    When you signed up, you put in the area codes/prefixes that were local, and when someone made a call, custom software on the Cisco ATA-182 device checked with the server to see if someone resided in that area and had an open line. If so, the call was routed over the net, the remote ATA-dialed the number, and you were patched through. If no one was in that area, your local ATA device dialed it out on your own phone line.

    The project was damn cool. However, the ATA-182 had some serious hardware bugs, and probably was the greatest contributor to the demise of the project. The original plan was to get FWD branded ATA's into stores like Best Buy so anyone could pick one up and contribute. As far as making money, I think they were betting on profit from hardware sales, but I'm not sure.

    FWD went away for awhile, and then re-emerged in its current incarnation. Hopefully this will address some of the security problems that were present in the beta, like the ability to dial a remote user's device by IP and be patched through to a dial tone. By doing this, you avoid the access policies and you could dial 911 or make LD calls on someone else's phone. Not good... at least for the victim.

  • The funny thing is that once you have an asterisk box working you can hook up to some very cheap VOIP providers (much cheaper than the phone company or even the "retail" VOIP providers). Not that the appeal of free stuff ever completely goes away, but if you can call anywhere in the US for less than $0.02/minute anyway there isn't much motivation to do the extra fuss and let someone use your phone lines for totally free calls.
  • I remember a similar system that let you send faxes by email using the same concept. I seem to recall that it used the phone number backwards in DNS for the address or something like that. Or am I mixing two different systems.

    Anyway, if anyone remembers what I'm talking about in more detail, please refresh my memory.
    • You mean this [tpc.int]?

      Yeah, it was handy.

      Other than the problem with obscene calls originated from one's POTS line, I wonder what one could do if one already had a pay VoIP service, like Vonage. I can make free calls to anywhere in Canada and the U.S. for a nominal fixed monthly charge. I don't think that Vonage would like the idea of me patching out going calls from Bellster and offering U.S./Canada calling, even if I don't explicitly charge for them (reselling, and all that).

  • Land lines (Score:3, Informative)

    by elgaard (81259) <elgaardNO@SPAMagol.dk> on Monday January 24 2005, @05:55PM (#11462006) Homepage
    Nice idea, but I don't believe it will work.

    1. Local calls are not free in most of the world. This limit the use for long-distance calls.

    2. Most people into this kind of stuff will be dropping their land line and use pure VoIP (including IP->PSTN service) + cell phones.

    I live in Denmark and switched to VoIP (musimi.dk).
    IP-IP calls are 0 c/min. Including calls to FWD, SipPhone etc.
    Local PSTN calls are 2.5 c/min (1.6 at night).
    DK->CA PSTN calls are 2.9 c/min
    DK->US PSTN calls are 3.2 c/min
    Subscription is $1/month/phonenumber.

    Of course I wouldn't mind using Bellster to make free calls to the US/Canada, but I cannot offer much in return.
  • Greed always wins.

    I am sure that there are various unscrupulous companies out there, jsut waiting for something like this to reach critical mass. When that happens, BAM. 3rd world telemarketers start to pester the everloving crap out of you.

    Regulation, for good or ill, is there for a reason. The restrictions that are in place just as much protect the consumer as it is to restrict their choice. And while we are all too aware of the restrictions, we take the protection for granted. Take those regulations aw
  • Based on the history of other P2P networks, I imagine it wouldn't be too useful... "Hello?" "Hi...may I speak to Madonna?" "Yes, this is she." "Uh..this is Madonna?" "Yes. How can I help you?" "Well...you don't sound like Madonna." "Oh? Whom do I sound like then?" "Well...is this Tom Waits's house?" either that or you just get the answering machine message looped ad infinitum. Either way, I'm not privy.

  • works sweet (Score:3, Interesting)

    by austad (22163) on Monday January 24 2005, @06:52PM (#11462733) Homepage
    I just set it up, and it works extremely well.

    I just set a custom prefix to use on my phones to tell it to route out Bellster, next step is to make all calls default through Bellster, and then fallback to my Voicepulse account or my local phone line.

    I called a buddy in NYC over it and he couldn't even tell it was VOIP. Not that I'm surprised, I've been doing VOIP for awhile now.

    Now all someone needs to do is come out with a little arm based box that runs it for use in your home, or a modified Xbox distro with asterisk. You don't need a Zaptel card if you have Vonage/Voicepulse/packet8/etc.

  • Asterisk is more accessible than suggested (Score:3, Informative)

    by roderickm (6912) on Monday January 24 2005, @09:02PM (#11463793)
    Yes, there are privacy and security concerns that stem from Bellster -- what happens when a bomb threat is called in using a Bellster route? -- but these are questions that must be answered as voice and data truly converge. Bellster is a disruptive technology, and Jeff Pulver is all about that.

    However, you set the barrier to entry way too high: Asterisk doesn't require a shiny new "PBX-ready" PC. You can choose any of the following bootable CDs to turn any old PC into an Asterisk box with just a Control-Alt-Delete. Not a PC fan? Asterisk now runs on Mac OSX, too. Now the only real barrier is the hardware, an FXO interface to connect to your POTS line. Just such an interface is reasonably priced at Digium.com, the makers of Asterisk.

    Bootable Asterisk CDs:
    http://knopsterisk.com/
    http://www.automate d.it/asterisk/
    http://www.xorcom.com/rapid/
    http ://www.osdisc.com/cgi-bin/view.cgi/products/li vecd/asterisklive

    Don't want to spend all that just to join the free love revolution that Bellster hopes to be? Well, Asterisk has tons of other uses, like being a PBX for your home or office, too. Set up mailboxes for each member of the office or household. Email an incoming voice message automatically. Zap the telemarketers that don't pay attention to the do-not-call list. The list goes on as far as your imagination: Asterisk makes computer telephony accessible to everyone with a computer. Even if Bellster isn't the future of telephony, Asterisk is.
    • Depends on your phone company, but local calls in the US are free up to about 12 miles away. Beyond that it's a toll call (intra LATA) that costs as much as long distance. You'd better have a good list of local exchanges programmed into your gateway or you'll get a big surprise on your phone bill.
    • Local calls are free in New Zealand.
      Can anybody else report where they are free?

      Incidentally, in the late 90s when I was living in London I visited New York. I went into a news agent and bought a cheap call card, and dialed my neighbour in London, from a phonebox in downtown Manhattan. Later I worked out that I had paid about the same for the call as if I had called him from my house next door to him (2p a minute during the day or something... I have forgotten the numbers).

    • Re:"Free" with a big cost (Score:4, Informative)

      by mwilliamson (672411) on Monday January 24 2005, @05:47PM (#11461898) Homepage Journal
      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.
        • wrt54g is a router made by Linksys. It runs a version of Linux, and several third parties have made their own versions of its firmware, adding various features... one of which is apparently the Asterisk PBX. VOIP is voice over internet protocol, which means any way of having a voice conversation over the internet. The sipura voip adapter is one way of making voice calls on the internet.

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