How to talk to phones from linux

[Joshua Pollak]

Just a suggestion, but try searching for 'predictive dialer', along 
with favored modifiers like 'open source' or 'linux'. My uncle used to 
work with and sell predictive dialers, basically its the software used 
by telemarketers to make sure their callers are on the phone as close 
to 100% of the time as possible. The software is also capable of 
hanging up if no live operator is available to take the call, as well 
as filter busy signals, etc.

Anyway, if there are any open source packages that do what you need, 
predictive dialing software might at least point you in the right 
direction.


On Dec 30, 2003, at 11:45 AM, John Chambers wrote:

> The folks I'm working for have just come up with a  request
> that  seems  to  be  difficult to find any real info about.
> What they want to do is have their linux boxes (mostly  RH,
> various  releases)  initiate  phone  calls,  and send voice
> messages.  One example is:
>
> <RING> Hello, Mr.  ___.  Your surgery is scheduled for this
> Tuesday at 10:45 am.  If this is a good time for you, press
> 1; if you'd like to reschedule press 2.
>
> The people involved would really  like  a  completely  open
> source  package  to  do this, because they have some fairly
> serious security issues (Can you say "HIPPA"?;-)  and  they
> need good control over exactly what the software does.  Any
> proprietary code would be a last resort.
>
> I've found a cool voice-generating project at  sourceforge,
> freetts, and generating the voice from the usual text looks
> like it's solved.  (Would you like that in an English or an
> Irish accent? Or maybe kevin16 the computer voice?) But how
> to get the sound to come out of a remote  telephone  is  so
> far  an unsolved problem, as is recognizing when the person
> at the other end presses a button.
>
> The only way I've found so far to have  the  computer  send
> voice  rather  than  data  is to go through some commercial
> services.  We all know that it's possible for computers  to
> make phone calls (;-), but the code for doing this seems to
> be hidden behind thick layers of secrecy.  Or maybe I  just
> haven't guessed the right terms to type to google.
>
> Anyone know anything about this?
>
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