Phone systems based on the venerable Asterisk are prolific in the market. Most companies boast about their phone system being based on Open Source software, but that’s as open as these companies are. When investing in a new phone system, you have to do due diligence if the phone company charges you a license per each device that connects to the system or not.

Most companies are clear and tell prospective customers exactly what they’ll have to pay to add additional nodes to their network, some companies, however, try to hide this fact and call their licenses a maintenance license or support contract.

Call this fee what ever you want, it’s still a license fee per device! Trying to hide this fact will just give you a bunch of angry customers. I’ve encountered many a pissed off customer due to this practice by a well known phone system provider, so when I talk to prospects I lay it out straight, call this fee whatever but in the end, you have to per for each device you want to connect to the phone system and you can’t just get an off the shelf SIP phone and get it connected.