Sneaking in just in time for the New Year celebrations, Digium has announced the millionth download of its Asterisk open source IP telephony platform.

Coming at the end of the 24th straight quarter of growth for the firm, the milestone highlights both the expanding influence of VoIP and the importance of Asterisk in this process.

"I am very proud of the great strides Digium made in 2007 to demonstrate Asterisk's unquestionable growth and impact on the SMB and enterprise markets," said Digium chief executive Danny Windham, in a recent press release.

"In many ways 2007 was Digium's coming of age with regard to aligning award-winning products and partnerships with a clear vision for the future of open source telephony and unified communications."

Asterisk allows phones to be connected to each other through an internet-based private branch exchange (IP PBX) and interacts with existing legacy phone systems.

But unlike many other IP telephony software applications, Asterisk is provided by Digium for free under open source agreements.