System information

CHAPTER 9
Internationalization
David Duffett
I traveled a good deal all over the world, and I got along
pretty good in all these foreign countries, for I have a
theory that it’s their country and they got a right
to run it like they want to.
—Will Rogers
Telephony is one of those areas of life where, whether at home or at work, people do
not like surprises. When people use phones, anything outside of the norm is an ex-
pectation not met, and as someone who is probably in the business of supplying tele-
phone systems, you will know that expectations going unmet can lead to untold misery
in terms of the extra work, lost money, and so forth that are associated with customer
dissatisfaction.
In addition to ensuring that the user experience is in keeping with what users expect,
there is also the need to make your Asterisk feel “at home.” For example, if an outbound
call is placed over an analog line (FXO), Asterisk will need to interpret the tones that
it “hears” on the line (busy, ringing, etc.).
By default (and maybe as one might expect since it was “born in the USA”), Asterisk
is configured to work within North America. However, since Asterisk gets deployed in
many places and (thankfully) people from all over the world make contributions to it,
it is quite possible to tune Asterisk for correct operation just about anywhere you choose
to deploy it.
If you have been reading this book from the beginning, chapter by chapter, you will
have already made some choices during the process of installation and initial configu-
ration that will have set up your Asterisk to work in your local area (and live up to your
customers’ expectations).
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