3rd Free Knowledge World Conference - Maracaibo

From GNU Telephony

The Third annual Free Knowledge World Conference was held in the city of Maracaibo at the end of November. This event was heavily sponsored by the Venezuelian government in part because of their new law mandating all public sector agencies migrate to libre software over a two year period. I presented slides and talked about ideas of GNU Telephony. I did not get to speak very much about the question of endpoint routed verse IP-PBX model, however.

I later visited Caracus where I had a chance to see the model Conatel multiserve Telecenter, as well as speak to and meet with various governmental agencies. I did not get to see to much of the country, though, as I was kept very busy in many different meetings while I was there.

The current Conatel sponsored telecenter project involves bringing internet and telephone connectivity through mobile community centers which can be internet connected, and use voip for voice telephone service. These use h323 phones and gnomemeeting. The one disadvantage is that the phone service is entirely under the control of an external carrier, including gatekeepers, management, routing, etc. This means a monopoly control exists over telecenters, at least for voice telephone service. I have some ideas to resolve this kind of problen, and how to use Bayonne to build a model Bayonne SIP telecenter.

The OpenOffice presentation is available for download.