[CS-FSLUG] OT: Asterisk VoIP server

[Timothy Butler]

Friends,
	My little adventure with hosted PBX for my church has run into a problem: it turns out we need two POTS lines to keep our fire department happy (with our fire alarm system). Since we have to keep those, my initial goal of keeping our overall phone bill the same after the move has fallen apart. So, I'm wondering about setting up our own Asterisk server instead. Has anyone on here set up an Asterisk server for a church (or another organization)? How did it go for you?

	I'm thinking about trying the FreePBX live CD from freepbx.org. If that works, Bandwidth.com offers a FreePBX trunk line for $25, so we could have two or three trunks for not all that much money. 

	Also, if you have any experience using PCI cards to connect Asterisk to POTS lines, I'd be interested in hearing about that too. Since we must have two POTS lines, I'm wondering if we could run those into the Asterisk server...

	Are there better options? I'm open to options concerning Asterisk distros, SIP trunks, etc., etc.

	Blessings,
			Tim