VoIP

VoIP project
The purpose of this project is to provide, possibly free, calls to people in the affected areas. We assume they'll need such service in order to stay in touch with relatives and friends, as well as, to look for new job opportunities, etc. According to our understanding of the demographic of the affected areas, just providing a PC with VoIP software (softphones such as Skype, Ekiga, etc.) will not be enough, hard phones will definitely be of use.

Subprojects
Kamogawa is a refugee center-to-be and we have good contacts with Chris Harrington there, so we may deploy some VoIP. In specific areas, Internet and phone service will not be restored for a long time. In such areas we plan to experiment with long-range (2-10km) WiFi links with highly directional antennas and try to have VoIP over them.

Kamogawa
Kalin is talking with with Simon from Denphone for possible support (handsets, pbx, possible limited free calls) initially for a month, renewable if the need is still there. Kalin is contacting Chris Harrington about this, but initial feedback was that maybe just Skype will be enough. (Kalin: Based on my understanding of local culture it will not!)

Internet is apparently available at the school.

Sounds like all we need to do in this case is arrange transportation for the gear and do some network install work when it gets there.

Obviously pending confirmation that Chris Harrington & co have some refugees moved in.

Long distance links
Existing VoIP repeater network over amateur radio (Thanks Stuart Woodward): http://www.qsl.net/7j1yaa/

Status updates
2011-03-22: received contact from Shae Errison and Bryan M Johns re support from Digium (company behind Asterisk) in the form of some hardware that will work well in low power situations.

2011-04-10: Rick gave a presentation/introduction to asterisk in THS. Slides available here: