[Asterisk-Users] Advice on BT ISDN Services (UK)

[Jon Fautley]

On 25 Aug 2004, at 12:23, Benjamin Johnson wrote:

> Hi all,
> I've been playing about with Asterisk for years now on and off, just 
> SIP to SIP calls, using FWD and suchlike. I'm moving house at the 
> beginning of September and have decided to build an Asterisk based 
> system for my home office.
> I'm in the UK and wonder if anyone can give me advice on lines and 
> hardware to use. Had planned to go with an ISDN2e line coupled with a 
> BT Speedway ISDN card [1] from eBay for the PSTN side and Cisco 2940 
> and 2960G devices talking SIP for the internal phones.
> In addition to this I want to have extra numbers provided to me 
> (MSN??) by BT  and then set up Asterisk to handle calls differently 
> depending on what number is called (i.e. work, home, fax).
>
> I don't have a problem setting this up under Asterisk (that's the fun 
> part) but what I need is advice on what to ask for from BT so I don't 
> get the wrong lines / services and so that it all works smoothly!

You NEED a BT ISDN2e connection - the Highway stuff is a waste of 
space, and prolly won't work with voice. Call them up (You'll need to 
be a business, they don't seem to sell anything other than Highway to 
home users) and ask for an ISDN2e circuit, and tell them you want a 
bunch of MSN's (Multiple Subscriber Numbers, I think) and they should 
be able to sort it out. MAKE SURE you deal with Business sales, not 
Residential Sales. Other than that, it should be fairly painless. I've 
not used * with MSN's, only DDI's, but for DDI's you need a) lots of 
money and b) a p2p mode ISDN line, which I believe requires an active 
(rather than passive, as the speedways are) ISDN card.

We tend to use active cards here at work, but I've used chan_capi with 
a BT speedway before, and it works just fine. I'm not sure that I have 
the configs laying about, but if you have any specific questions, feel 
free to fire them at me :)

Jon