[Asterisk-Users] Is the X100P a WinModem?

[Steven M. Sokol]

Coming from the [evil] Dialogic world (where even the drivers cost
money) the prices Digium is charging seem very reasonable.  New
single-span Dialogic T1 interfaces cost at least three times ($1225 USD
was the best price I could find on the D/240PCI-T1) what the single span
Digium card costs.  THEN ADD THE PRICE OF THE DRIVERS.  THEN ADD THE
PRICE OF REALLY BAD  TECHNICAL SUPPORT.  THEN ADD THE PRICE OF
PROPRIETARY APPLICATION SOFTWARE.  It's not pretty.  (However, it has
fed me and my family pretty well-...)

The Quad-span card is even more of a bargain.  The Intel boys claim that
they have a serious advantage because they do voice, tone (and sometimes
fax) encoding/decoding on the board, thus saving the core CPU.  Big
deal.  Add another CPU.  It don't cost much.  Certainly not as much as
the Dialogic quad-span DM3 card with the requisite DSPs attached.

What I would love to see from Digium (after the new Wildcard TDM400P
with FXO support is released) would be a higher density analogue
platform.  Sure you can keep packing cards in, if you have a high-end
server with a passive back plane.  But wouldn't it be nice to be able to
do a 8-FXO x 4-FXS on a single card!  Kind of like the Daytona cards
that Pika offers.  

I know that channel banks can do much the same thing, but that adds one
more point of complexity and would most likely cost more ($750+ USD for
the bank + $500 for T100P = $1250 USD) than a good integrated high
density card.  Just my .02.

Side question:  how long will it be before telcos start offering
commercial SIP or MGCP or other native VoIP services (over DSL/cable
copper, fiber, wireless, etc.) and legacy stuff like voice T1 and POTS
go away?

Cheers

Steven