asterisk users - Jul 2003 - Can I interoperate with public PSTN gateways ?

Apologies if this is an FAQ, I wasn't able to find an answer googling:

Will any of the public PSTN/VoIP gateway services (Vonage, Packet8 etc)
interoperate with * ?

I'd like to deploy a box which provides PBX service for analog handsets,
and handles inbound/outbound calls via both analog PSTN lines, and,
say Packet8 VoIP service. I understand that I can do this by connecting
the analog side of an ATA to an analog card in a machine running *,
but I'd prefer to terminate the VoIP traffic directly---I figure that
eventually
these services will allow multiple concurrent calls, and at that time I'd
need multiple ATA type boxen, which seems rather silly.

Hops that made sense, and thanks.

>Apologies if this is an FAQ, I wasn't able to find an answer googling:
>
>Will any of the public PSTN/VoIP gateway services (Vonage, Packet8 etc)
>interoperate with * ?
>
>I'd like to deploy a box which provides PBX service for analog handsets,
>and handles inbound/outbound calls via both analog PSTN lines, and,
>say Packet8 VoIP service. I understand that I can do this by connecting
>the analog side of an ATA to an analog card in a machine running *,
>but I'd prefer to terminate the VoIP traffic directly---I figure 
>that eventually
>these services will allow multiple concurrent calls, and at that time
I'd
>need multiple ATA type boxen, which seems rather silly.
>
>Hops that made sense, and thanks.
Vonage doesn't work, and has explicitly said that they will not work 
with Asterisk and SIP.  You must buy their ATA-186 and use it like an 
analog phone line.  This is frighteningly short-sighted, or an 
inability/unwillingness to develop alternate product and price 
strategies for different call patterns.

Packet8, in my conversations with their sales/support line, has said 
they don't give out the SIP data to customers.  However, I seem to 
recall from prior list postings that several people are using their 
service so there must be a backdoor or method to squeeze that info 
out of them.

iconnecthere.com (DeltaThree) works fine, and will give you the 
username/password for SIP use.  They will not allow multiple calls at 
once on the same account, though.

There are a growing number of IAX and SIP service providers.  Dig 
around on the archives a bit to find some.

JT