The other day, the CEO of VoIPtel - mr Jan Bjørkhaug, visited my office to tell me about some exciting development from ATCOM. ATCOM is a producer of various VoIP equipment, and I am very found of their IP0x line of PBXes. VoIPtel is the European distributor of ATCOM products.

Last year I had the chance to talk directly to representatives from ATCOM and gave them my feedback on the lack of modularity in their IP0x-line.

What I heard the other day is nearly good news: Modularity - and a steel chassis. No more plastic, no more either-this-or-that regarding BRI, FXO or FXS. Actually - we still will have to make a choice - but it's much easier now.

What you see here is a picture of their prototype. According to Jan, the solution will come in several configurations: 4 BRI slots (very important for us here in Europe), 4 Analogue slots and - SURPRISE 4 GSM slots. Of course, not all at the same time - but in various combinations.

Yes you read right: ATCOM now have GSM support.

I did knew that ATCOM where working on both BRI and GSM versions of their Asterisk based PBX - but I never would have thought that they in fact would go down the modular path.

What I did expect is a "pure BRI" and a "pure GSM" as complements to their "pure" analogue products. The BRI solution was made public some time ago, but it did not excite me.

What we have here IS exciting.

There are places in the world where it make much sense to put out a GSM2VoIP or a GSM2Analogue gateway - and do your own super-private peering between GSM operators. Doing stuff like this is both time consuming and not cheap (but apparently cheaper than calling from one GSM network to the other). For smaller offices, having one device that "have everything, except the kitchen sink" may be a good idea. On the other hand, regular readers of this blog know how I feel about All Singing And Dancing Devices. I have not had the chance to try out the IP-4G (which is the proper name for this beast). However, if ATCOM is holding the same build quality as their IP0x range - we will have access to a really neat product.

At the current point in time I have no idea if the BRI ports can be set both a NT and a TE mode. The BRI daughter board have DIP switches, so in respect to this I really hope this is true. I would have preferred that choosing between NT or TE could be done in software - but given the current price range of ATCOM devices I can certainly live with doing this switching manually. It could be much worse.

Given the early release of this information, there is no pricing available. You can not quote me on this, but given the price range for other IP0x hardware, my guess is that the SRP would be between USD 500,- and USD 800,-. What will make the device land in the high-end is the number of GSM interfaces. The BRI channels may also up the price a bit, but not as much as the GSM interfaces.