Digium’s Wildcard TDM2400 enables as many as 24 phone ports, either all VoIP or a mix of traditional analog telephony and VoIP. The card also could hook up traditional fax and other equipment into a VoIP environment. Previously, Digium offered a 4-port analog card.

As far as we know this is the highest density of analog ports that anyone has on a single card, said Mark Spencer, Digium president. This pushes you into a more density within the PC without having to use external boxes to get there.

The 32-bit 33MHz PCI 2.2-compliant card comes in two flavors: FXS, which connects the Asterix open-source PBX to analog or IP phones; and FXO, which connects to a phone line through a PC.

Digium also announced its new echo-cancellation module, which promises enterprise-grade VoIP quality. The module is optional with either card.

IT administrators would install the card and download either the free version of Asterisk, an open-source PBX developed by Digium, or license its professional counterpart Asterisk Business Edition.

Asterix with the new 24-port card would enable companies to mix VoIP and traditional environments and enable a slow transition to VoIP, Spencer said. You don’t have to upgrade your whole system, he said.

Asterix can be used as a traditional PBX or VoIP gateway and with an interface card enables very cheap voice and data transport over IP, TDM, switched and Ethernet architectures.

How cheap? The FXS and FXO cards with echo cancellation retail at $2,095 and $2,335, respectively. Without the echo-cancellation module they would cost $1,810 and $2,050. Asterix Business Edition license would be on top of that.

That compares to an average of between $600 and $1,000 per user for an enterprise to migrate to traditional telephony to VoIP using non-open source alternatives.

Asterix can be configured to support Web conferencing and other features. IT managers that may not have much familiarity configuring a Linux web server can buy various graphical user interfaces from Digium partners.

Spencer said a GUI from Fonality, for instance, would suite novice users because it’s the easiest to use, but the tradeoff is has limited features. Switchvox has a more feature-rich Asterix GUI, but does require some telecom background knowledge, he said. A GUI from Vonik would provide IT administrators already familiar with telecom infrastructure an even more powerful interface, according to Spencer.

There are as many as 350 Asterix-technology resellers worldwide, he said.

Huntsville, Alabama-based Digium expects to release its newer Asterix version 1.2 during the next several weeks.