Message-ID: <20220523024144.GA27471@telecom.csail.mit.edu>
Date: Mon, 23 May 2022 02:41:44 +0000
From: Bill Horne <malQRMassimilation@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: ISDN's days are numbered: What should you do?
On Sun, May 22, 2022 at 12:11:50PM -0400, Fred Goldstein wrote:
> On 5/21/2022 12:36 PM, Bill Horne wrote:
> >On 5/19/2022 9:05, Bill Horne wrote:
> >>>I was talking to an old friend yesterday, and he told me that he's
> >>>been working from home for a while now, and the conversation turned to
> >>>ISDN phone service, which I recommend to anyone who can still obtain
> >>>it.
> >>>
> >>>1. Which states still have tariffs for ISDN BRI lines?
> >>...
>
> ISDN Basic Rate Interface (BRI) is generally no longer available in
> the US. Verizon and I think ATT long ago gave formal notice of
> discontinuance or grandfathering. Maybe Qwest, pre-Century, didn't
> bother, so it may still be on the books there. But few know how to
> provision it. Many of the switches that provided it (mainly 5ESS and
> DMS-100 in the US) no longer are in service. It was useful, especially
> for broadcasters doing remote feeds. It was better than a modem for
> Internet access, and that's what killed it as it was coming out in the
> early 1990s -- the Bells hated the Internet, which broke their
> locality-based business model, and while they couldn't attack modem
> users per se, they could at least attack the most obvious Internet
> user group, non-Centrex ISDN BRI users. Bell Atlantic l/k/a Verizon
> was also fanatical in those days about selling Centrex, and saw ISDN
> BRI as a tool for Centrex feature phones, but that was about it. That
> business has faded out too.
I don't often disagree with Fred on issues like ISDN, but I'm going to
advance a different theory: I had a chance to test an ISDN line at my
home near Boston, back around 1994 or so, and I was /very/ surprised to
find that getting a 64Kbps connection on either of the "Bearer"
channels was very difficult.
It turned out that the only solution was to redial several times, and
sooner or later I'd get a 64Kbps connection. After 15 or 20 minutes of
dialing and redialing, I might end up with two 64Kbps "Bearer"
connections to The Well, an ISP which served ISDN customers, and I
could bind them together to obtain a 128 Kbps Internet connection.
When I investigated, I quickly found out that almost all of the
T-Carrier systems connecting the central office to its Tandems were
not equipped for "8 bit clean" connections. In other words, the
connections from the CO to Tandem offices were designed for the
original T-Carrier "robbed bit" signalling paradigm, and were not
capable of delivering 64Kbps data connections.
I think Verizon - and probably the other Baby Bells - wanted to avoid
the expense of retraining a unionized workforce to make use of the
8-bit-clean fiber-optic channels just being introduced at the
time. The company would have had to retrain not only the "CO"
technicians, but also the provisioning specialists responsible for
specifying the number and type of trunks for each CO to use for each
service. Even though ISDN data calls were billed per-minute, the
accountants most likely projected more cost than revenue.
Bill
--
Bill Horne
(Please remove QRM from my email address if you write to me directly)
Message-ID: <t69lrn$kkm$1@dont-email.me>
Date: 20 May 2022 23:21:32 -0400
From: "Michael Trew" <michael.trew@att.net>
Subject: Support for more regulation of tech companies has declined
in U.S.
"Overall, 44% of Americans think major technology companies should be
regulated more than they are now, down from 56% in April 2021.
Conversely, the share of Americans who say they want less government
regulation of major technology companies has roughly doubled, from about
one-in-ten (9%) in previous years to one-in-five today."
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/05/13/support-for-more-regulation-of-tech-companies-has-declined-in-u-s-especially-among-republicans/
Message-ID: <b20ff9ca-464c-655c-c460-1b338bbd9594@ionary.com>
Date: 22 May 2022 12:11:50 -0400
From: "Fred Goldstein" <invalid@see.sig.telecom-digest.org>
Subject: Re: ISDN's days are numbered: What should you do?
On 5/21/2022 12:36 PM, Bill Horne wrote:
> On 5/19/2022 9:05, Bill Horne wrote:
>>> I was talking to an old friend yesterday, and he told me that he's
>>> been working from home for a while now, and the conversation turned to
>>> ISDN phone service, which I recommend to anyone who can still obtain
>>> it.
>>>
>>> 1. Which states still have tariffs for ISDN BRI lines?
>> ...
ISDN Basic Rate Interface (BRI) is generally no longer available in
the US. Verizon and I think ATT long ago gave formal notice of
discontinuance or grandfathering. Maybe Qwest, pre-Century, didn't
bother, so it may still be on the books there. But few know how to
provision it. Many of the switches that provided it (mainly 5ESS and
DMS-100 in the US) no longer are in service. It was useful, especially
for broadcasters doing remote feeds. It was better than a modem for
Internet access, and that's what killed it as it was coming out in the
early 1990s -- the Bells hated the Internet, which broke their
locality-based business model, and while they couldn't attack modem
users per se, they could at least attack the most obvious Internet
user group, non-Centrex ISDN BRI users. Bell Atlantic l/k/a Verizon
was also fanatical in those days about selling Centrex, and saw ISDN
BRI as a tool for Centrex feature phones, but that was about it. That
business has faded out too.
ISDN Primary Rate Interface (PRI), which runs over a DS-1 ("T1")
channel, is still out there, though again its number are in
decline. It is a very good trunk interface for PBX systems, and many
different 1995-2010 vintage switching systems support it, as it
handled the dial-up era's modem pools. But most newer systems use SIP
trunks instead. PRI has higher quality of service than SIP/RTP/IP, but
the industry has moved away from it, as the higher-volume IP services
usually have a lower price tag.
--
Fred R. Goldstein k1io fred "at" ionary.com
+1 617 795 2701
