[Asterisk-Dev] best approach for a new isdn driver mainly for asterisk.. ?!

[Patrick]

On Thu, 2003-04-24 at 12:27, Andrea Venturi wrote:
> Steven Critchfield ha scritto:
> Who kows, maybe we could get
> > to the point of supporting ISDN handsets which should be better than
> > ADSI. 
> > 

Although I have no experience with ADSI phones, I *do* know that many
small businesses in .nl use ISDN phones right now and would be reluctant
to throw away that capital expense by having to buy analog, ADSI or IP
phones. In the small business marketplace having support for ISDN phones
makes total sense to me. Asterisk is not a plug and play solution right
now but if it supported ISDN phones it definitely would be. For small
businesses this is important. Europe is big on ISDN. Many households
have ISDN, even the Dutch PTT sells you ISDN if you request 2 analog
lines. One of the first things a startup does is order an ISDN line so
you immediately get a voice line and a "dedicated" fax line. Afaik
Germany is the same story if not more.

In the PBX4Linux documentation (http://isdn.jolly.de) I read that for
each ISDN phone you need to do some hacks with an NT1 and a crossed
cable. Although it is pretty cool that Andreas donated PBX4Linux to the
community, imho it is not really a clean professional solution to sell
to a business. For one, NT1 boxes are owned by the PTT and can afaik not
be bought separately from the PTT. So you would have to find them
somewhere else. If the business has 10 phones, those 10 NT1 boxes + 10
used electricity outlets become a mess if not cost prohibitive assuming
you can even find the 2nd hand NT1 boxes. Otoh it seems suitable for a
home setup.

Imho Digium could generate some nice revenues if they sold the
appropriate hardware that support ISDN lines and ISDN phones and add
support for it in Asterisk. Given the rather gloomy economic outlook in
Europe, such a financially attractive and feature rich solution would be
appealing to small cost conscious businesses.

Regards,
Patrick