A voice platform that behaves like a carrier's, run by the people who wrote it.
Most providers selling a “cloud phone system” are reselling someone else’s platform with their logo on it. We’re not. Astera is a multi-tenant voice platform that Real World built and operates ourselves — and it’s what CloudPBX runs on. When we say we run the phone system, we mean we wrote and maintain the software that runs it.
For carriers, ITSPs and large or unusual deployments that need their own platform, Astera is available as a managed solution in its own right. You get a voice platform engineered to scale, secured for a hostile internet, and supported by the engineers who maintain the code — without standing up and running one yourself.
Underneath, Astera is Asterisk done properly for scale. A session border controller fronts signalling at the edge; a pool of media proxies handles RTP relay, NAT traversal, SRTP encryption and WebRTC. Configuration is database-backed and real-time, so endpoints, numbers and routing change without anyone hand-editing a dialplan. It’s the kind of depth a technical voice buyer expects to see before they trust a platform with their estate.
Voice platforms are a constant target for toll fraud, so Astera assumes the internet is hostile. It defends with geographic controls on registrations and calls, per-endpoint IP access control lists, rate limiting and malicious user-agent filtering — designed to stop fraudulent calls before they cost anyone money. Signalling is TLS-encrypted, media is SRTP, and every call can be traced end-to-end so faults get diagnosed in minutes rather than guessed at.
Tenants are isolated from one another, each with their own endpoints, number ranges and call handling. That isolation is what makes Astera right for running voice across many businesses or sites — and it’s why CloudPBX can give every customer a secure, business-ready phone system on shared, well-run infrastructure.
We don’t just install open-source voice software — we build and maintain it. Real World produces its own Ubuntu builds of the media-proxy components Astera depends on and publishes them on our public mirror for the wider community. The depth that makes Astera reliable is the same depth we bring to every voice problem you hand us. If you’ve outgrown an off-the-shelf PBX, or you need behaviour a vendor product won’t give you, this is the conversation to have — and we’ll tell you honestly whether a hosted seat on CloudPBX or a managed Astera platform of your own is the right fit.
What's included
- Multi-tenant by design: isolated tenants, each with their own endpoints, number ranges and call handling
- Built on Asterisk with a database-backed, real-time configuration model — not a static dialplan we hand-edit
- Session border controller and dedicated media handling, with encrypted signalling and media and end-to-end call tracing for fast fault diagnosis
- Toll-fraud defence: geographic controls on calls and registrations, per-endpoint IP ACLs, rate limiting and malicious-UA filtering
- Presence, BLF and message-waiting across the tenant estate
- Carriage on Real World's AS45437 network via carriers including Symbio, Pivotel, Over the Wire and Vocus
- Run as CloudPBX, or delivered and managed as your own platform
Why it matters
We built it, so we can change it
Astera is our own platform, not a vendor's black box. When you need a routing change, an integration, or behaviour an off-the-shelf product won't do, the people who wrote the code are the people who answer the phone.
Carrier-grade where it counts
A real session border controller, dedicated media handling, TLS and SRTP throughout, and toll-fraud defence that stops fraudulent calls before they cost anyone money. This is the same platform we trust to run CloudPBX for our own customers.
Multi-tenant, properly isolated
Tenants are separated from one another, each with their own endpoints, numbers and call handling — the right shape for carriers, ITSPs and anyone running voice for more than one business or site.
We operate it, we don't just install it
Running a voice platform in production is a different skill from standing one up. We operate, patch and trace this estate every day — and we contribute back, building media-proxy components for Ubuntu and publishing them on our public mirror.
Technologies we use
- Asterisk (PJSIP, real-time configuration)
- OpenSIPS (session border controller / load balancer)
- RTPEngine (media proxy — RTP, SRTP, WebRTC)
- TLS / SRTP
- HEP / Homer (SIP call tracing)
- Symbio, Pivotel, Over the Wire, Vocus (voice carriers)
- Real World AS45437 carrier network