That link was a great read and makes a strong point! Another reason corps invest in OSS is to develop something they rely on - special driver, etc - and capitalizing on that in the form of OSS maintainers charging consulting fees has been successful. Exactly in agreement with making the incentives line up with their own.

No vendor or hardware lock-in is key. Can you give insight into the costs that inform the monthly rate? Emergency services / telephone network?

Sure thing! Behind every "unlimited" plan out there, there is a per minute rate that small carriers like us have to pay in order to get access to the regular phone network and connect to any phone number in the world. On top of that, there's a monthly cost per phone number, per E911 address registration, per voice channel, etc. Then, you have the ever popular "taxes and fees", which can vary based on the user's location and can become complex very quickly. Not to mention FCC registration fees and taxes. Then there's the cost of the server infrastructure to register the phones and keep them online. And finally - STIR/SHAKEN implementation has a cost of registration and verification as well.

Thank you for this little window into what it really takes to make this work.

How lovely and so very Bellingham-esque! $5/mo and looks like it can be used outside Bham.

https://telehamster.net/node/7

I hope these guys do well or more local options keep on popping up.