[Asterisk-Users] Asterisk BRI in the USA

[Steve Brown]

Mark Coccimiglio wrote:
> Hey all,
>    It such a shame that BRI technology is such a flop in the USA.  For a
> small office such as mine it would be a great product.  So her goes my
> question....  What is a known asterisk working BRI card that will
> operate in the USA.  I need to weigh price/quality.  I need to do
> DID/DDI (or what ever you want to call it).  Asterisk will do everything
> else I need.  The ILEC has at the other end a DMS-100.  I have been
> having all kinds of problems using POTS lines that I will consider it an
> investment to move to a more digital connection.   I am considering
> going the VoIP route (Vonage, Broadvoice, etc...) but before I commit
> either way I'm exploring all my options.
>
> Your opnion matter here to please let me know.
>
>
> Mark Coccimiglio
> n3whx at amsat.org
> sip:293625 at fwd.pulver.com
>
In theory, bri makes a lot of sense, flawless disconnect detection, 8 
directory numbers, placing a caller on hold is done by the switch and 
doesn't tie up a line, and on. But my experience hasn't been all that 
encouraging.

I've had a bri line in Seattle for about 4 years or so. The local Qwest 
co switch is a 5ESS. It took about 3 months to get it properly 
provisioned for a couple of Lucent 970 phones.  And that's only because 
one of their techs felt sorry for me, came in on a Saturday and followed 
the provisioning instructions I found on a telecom site. I'm now 
convinced that if I had provided a copy of the 5ESS screens with my 
order and they actually got to the tech, I would not have had a problem.

Next, I got a Eicon Diva board and tried to get the hisax kernel driver 
working. It's ni-1 implementation, the only one I could find, isn't very 
complete. It was written by a guy in Australia using only an isdn 
simulator, a significant accomplishment. It appears that it's intent was 
to just place outgoing data calls.  At best, it would signal my POTS 
line, but give up during call setup. Unfortunately, our layer 3 protocol 
is secret and the specs have to be purchased from Telcordia. The last 
time I checked, assuming I chose the right publication, it was about $600.

Adding ni-1 to either Junghanns' work or visdn probably wouldn't be that 
difficult given the specs. Both of these drivers happily talk to my $10 
HFC-PCI card and negotiate, then assign a tei to the phone. So, the 
existing layer 1 and 2 stuff configured as point-to-multipoint seems to 
work fine. My understanding is that all bri's, both here and in Europe, 
use the same Q.920/921 standards. It's layer 3 that's different. Given 
an ni-1 protocol stack, hardware like Junghanns' 4 and 8 port cards 
should work with Asterisk here too.

So,
 - Telcordia NI-1 specs
 - Some code
 - Detailed provisioning instructions for at least a 5ESS and a DMS-100

Anybody interested?

Steve