I want to connect my web application to a real live telephone by using the "tel:xxxxx" href attribute in HTML. I cannot make it go through skype or anything because internet is more expensive here. I want it to go through direct landline. As in when the user clicks the link; the phone would automatically dial said number.
What hardware and software do I need?
What do I need to do in order to get started?
You will not be able to directly do this from a browser application, because you will need interface to hardware on your PC:
You can either build a native PC app using ruby (or any other language), or if you want to deploy from your browser you can use the loco-ruby (https://github.com/catmando/LocoRuby) application that will provide a browser to PC interface.
The modem hardware will come with probably enough information on how to actually dial the phone etc.