interested in setting up a free voip-pstn gateway in nepal

forgive me my lack of understanding of technicalities, i am a surgeon by profession, not an i.t. expert

My objective: a sip to pstn gateway in nepal, free for the user, funded by me.

after spending lots of time searching for a voip-pstn gateway in nepal, i have come to the conclusion that no such service exists for nepal. So, here is what i want to do:

I want to set up a device in kathmandu, nepal, connected to a local pstn line. the device will receive incoming sip calls and make a local call to the desired number through the connected pstn line. since sip to sip calls are free, a user anywhere in the world will be able to dial the sip address of the device, and will be able to call a pstn line in nepal through the device. Of course the local pstn to pstn connection will be charged, but it will be a cheap, and i am willing to pay for the charges, or fund it through donations from interested organisations in nepal.

Here are my questions:
1. is it possible?
2. what devices should i buy?
3. how should i set up the devices?
4. how do i limit each call to under 10 minutes?

Thank you all for your kind help.
Regards,
Suyog Mainali

Welcome to Voipuser forums.

It is certainly possible to do what you are asking and not expensive on a very small scale. If you are providing a free service that will become widely known then it will be used fairly heavily. The first thing that you should do is find out if it is legal and whether it would violate your contract with your local phone company. You would need at least one dedicated PSTN line so that it does not interfere with you own calls. The current call costs to Nepal are around 20 cents/min and to Katmandu 8 cents/min - how do they compare to the in-country PSTN costs?

since voip has been legalised in nepal, it will not be a violation of the rules. the local pstn to pstn charge is around a cent per minute. I already have a dedicated pstn line, that i do not use. And about running into high costs, since each call will be limited to a certain number of minutes, I can keep the cost down to managable limits. And anyways, when that one pstn line is busy in a call, another simultaneous call can not be connected, or can it?

I am thinking of hooking up a sipura 3102 device to the pstn line for voip to pstn forwarding. will it work? or should i use my old pc to run a dedicated asterix server? which would be a better option? Since i am in china now, i can pick up equipments for cheap here, what equipments do you suggest before i return back to nepal?

Thanking you in advance,
Suyog

I have a Lynksys 3102 and it can do what you are asking. I have used it in that way when I have been in the UK calling my home in Canada using voip and then having the 3102 transfer the call to a local dialtone (local calls in Canada are free).
The 3102 is fairly complicated to set up and the manuals are not very good (I used the Sipura manual that is good). It is probably an inexpensive way to start. If you wand full record keeping etc. then you would have to look for another solution later but the 3102 can still be used for the connection (to PSTN) device. Remember, voip uses bandwidth so you need a good, fast, internet connection.

incoming voip to pstn in nepal is still illegal. Outgoing has been legalised.

Linksys 3102 requires one pstn line, that means your one line will be constantly busy, if someone else wants to use it, will not be possible at the same time. Yes you can limit the calls to 10 mins only.

For just one line, 128 Kbps adsl connection will do. However if you wish to use adsl for other purpose as well, like internet surfing and outgoing calls as well, then you will require higher bandwidth, such as 256 or 512 Kbps.

However please be careful, as this is still illegal in Nepal, and all risk is yours to provide such service in Nepal.

You can contact me at nash1850 [!at] hotmail.com (replace the [!at] with a @) for further info. Am from Kathmandu myself.

Thanks
Prashant