"Can I connect Asterisk to my local phone company line (or lines)?

Yes, there are many companies that provide equipment that will alow your Asterisk PBX to attach to the PSTN directly. This is the second of two ways I mentioned earlier to connect your Asterisk system to the PSTN. Of course, this is another "gotcha" in that the cards or adapters to connect to the PSTN cost money. The more lines you connect to, the more money.

"Does Asterisk work with fax?"

It mostly does. This is one of the flakier parts of Asterisk. Its fax performance is dependent on the quality of all your components such as the fax machine, telephone lines, etc.

Asterisk also has some builtin capability to receive faxes, notify you, and convert to Adobe PDF files and send them to you.

"Is Asterisk programmable?"

Yes very, but another "gotcha". The programs are called Asterisk dialing plans. It doesn't cost money if you program it yourself, but it will take some time to learn. There are numerous Asterisk dialing plans available for free on the Internet. Good-by telemarketers!

"Is it hard to install?"

You can download an almost-ready-to-run system over the Internet. With a little configuration you will be up and running (but see the answer to the next question as to whether you should).

"Any more gotchas?"

As you can probably tell from the length of what precedes (or maybe just by counting the acronyms), Asterisk has a learning curve. Geeky, nerdy types are probably best-suited to setting up, programming, configuring and maintaining Asterisk.

But there are commercial companies that will do it for you. Of course, they charge for their services.

For a modest investment in money and some time for your learning curve you can have a PBX that rivals many large companies. Enjoy!