GoIP? What the %^&* is a GoIP?

Sometimes I see technical terms that cause me confusion. So it was when I saw Matt (@calltopology) tweet about “Using a GoIP with A2Billing for outbound calls.” My initial reaction was , “WTF is a GoIP? It sounds a bit like a disease.”

Of course, it isn’t a disease. Clicking a little further, I found that Matt has recently been exploring the use of a HyberTone GSM-toSIP gateway device. That company brands their GSM gateways with the rather obtuse “GoIP” monicker. I suppose it was predicated upon FoIP, another persistent term that I find to be something of an abomination.

My own language preferences aside, Matt does a nice job of describing how to setup the GSM gateway with his preferred Asterisk distro and billing solution. What he describes is a bit like the project that I undertook, so long ago now, when integrating a Portech SIP-to-GSM gateway with a local instance of Asterisk.

Back then SIP-to-GSM gateways were still relatively rare. Most of the affordable interface hardware terminated into an analog line jack, requiring an FXO interface to bring it into Asterisk.

It seems that there are a lot more options for SIP-to-GSM hardware, from freestanding boxes line those from Portech, HyberTone or 2N, to Sangoma W400 modular add-in cards for use within an Asterisk server. I see that the single-port GoIP gateway is available from Amazon for $290 or on Ebay, shipped from China, for $117.99.

The price on such things seems to have dropped by over half in the years since I undertook the project. That very fact may bring a single port gateway into the realm of mad money for some users.