David Rowe

From VillageTelco

For the last few years I have been working on the Free Telephony Project - free (as in speech) hardware and software for telephony. This has spawned a community developing and using embedded Asterisk based on the Blackfin processor; the IP04 embedded Asterisk IP-PBX; and the Oslec open source echo canceller. About 1000 IP04s have been made, and many thousands of people are using Oslec to cancel echo on their Asterisk systems.

I write a little bit too much about my projects on my blog: Beer, Coffee, and a little DSP.

Prior to the Free Telephony Project I had a real job in the sat-com industry, was involved in a telephony start-up, and did some University R&D in Digital Signal Processing (DSP). So I have a mix of software/hardware/DSP and business skills, although these days I prefer just to hack telephony. I live in Adelaide, South Australia with my wife Rosemary and three kids aged 12, 10, and 2.5.

Making a telephone call should be a right, not a privilege. So here is my big question: How do we take what we have got now (open software/hardware, commodity hardware components, a bunch of smart people) and use it to give every person the ability to make a telephone call?