The exciting thing about Asterisk to me is not how well it can replicate traditional PBXs, but that it allows you to deal with voice communications programmatic

The exciting thing about Asterisk to me is not how well it can replicate traditional PBXs, but that it allows you to deal with voice communications programmatically, with a very low barrier to entry. This allows all kinds of experimentation with voice and touch tone, which was previously inaccessible to hackers in an accessible way. Having a UI option for input/output that works with any touch tone phone is starting to produce interesting projects. I've used Asterisk for a real-world game and an automated booty call system (ahem). And friends of mine are using it as an interface for games on large screens (playmegaphone.com) and an interface for networked objects (botanicalls.com). These are things it was never intended to do, but because it's turned the phone system into software, you can hack it and repurpose it. And that's why it's interesting, not the fact that it may-or-may-not replace corporate PBXs.