[Asterisk-biz] Costs for PRIs in Canada

[Geoff Nordli]

asterisk-biz-bounces at lists.digium.com wrote:
> Jason Becker wrote:
>> Hi Geoff,
>> 
>> Geoff Nordli wrote:
>> 
>>> Does anyone know what I can expect to pay for a PRI in Canada?
>>> 
>>> At what point does it make sense to move from analog lines to a PRI?
>>> 
>>> What about the costs of using the extra PRI channels for Internet
>>> access? 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> There was some relevant discussion on *-users:
>> 
>> http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.telephony.pbx.asterisk.user/51755
>> 
>> If you find a provider that offers a service similar to XO or
>> Electric Lightwave in Canada please let me know.
>> 
>> Partial PRI is prohibitively expensive (deliberately so) from my
>> experience with Telcos. So there is this 9-16 trunk spot where a
>> Channel Bank is indicated.
> 
> I forgot to mention that another option we looked at were the
> Voicetronix OpenSwitch cards: 
> 
> http://www.voicetronix.com/hda.htm
> 
> I'm not sure how much success people have had with these and *. I do
> remember seeing some posts to *-users. These cards were discussed
> occasionally before the 4-port FXO Digium cards became
> available. Now I
> rarely see anything about them.
> 
> Cheers

I looked at the OpenSwitch cards, but I get the feeling that there is some
risk using them with Asterisk.  They are also not that cheap.  I was quoted
these prices in CDN dollars:

OpenSwitch6   $1253
OpenSwitch12  $1953

The one thing I really liked about the OpenSwitch cards was the automatic
failover to an internal line in the event of system failure.

I read the thread that you linked and it appears the best thing to do is buy
an AB1 for FXS ports.  I saw one on ebay today for $140 CDN.  I almost think
I should pick one of those up. :)

Have a great day!

Geoff