Asterisk 1.10 touted for summer beta release by Digium

The Asterisk PBX engine - described as "a Swiss army knife of telephony" by developer Digium - is set for an update in 2011.

On October 21st 2010 the long-term supported Asterisk 1.8 series was made available, which is not due to reach its "end of life" date until that date in 2015.

However, like the 1.6.x series, Asterisk 1.10 is expected to be a standard release, with one year of updates and a further year of security patches.

In a post on the Digium blog, Malcolm Davenport, a "lifer" at the company, says the new version of the Asterisk PBX engine should be out "in the October-ish timeframe".

"This means that we'll have betas and release candidates beginning in the summer," he adds.

Among the new features are the removal of the cap on the number of audio codecs that may be installed, as well as a conferencing application designed to solve frequency problems that currently exist with some clients.