[asterisk-users] North American voice BRI - Informal survey

[Stephen Bosch]

Jon Pounder wrote:
> Quoting Tzafrir Cohen <tzafrir.cohen at xorcom.com>:
> 
>> On Wed, Jul 04, 2007 at 11:05:52AM -0500, Joe Greco wrote:
>>>>> Sorry I'm a little late to the thread but this question has   
>>> puzzled me as
>>>>> well.  My key thing for me is hardware.
>>>> In the UK but ... Cheap BRI card...
>>> To use it in the US, you need it to support US signalling.
>> What do they use for BRI in the US?
> 
> less and less :)

For data, yes.

> it was popular for data in the mid 90's, adsl killed it, its  
> practically unheard of for voice, its tariffed though so its still  
> offered but you really have to know what rock to turn over to order  
> it.

I just called the Business Services line at Telus and said "I want
pricing on a BRI".

I got "You mean a PRI?"

I said, "No, I mean a BRI -- Basic Rate Interface. I don't need more
than a few channels."

I got "Okay, I'll look into it for you."

I got a call a couple of hours later with pricing. Amazing.

> In Canada at least there is no such thing as a residential service
> or more people would be hacking around with it, but paying the  
> commercial price is a bit steep to play with to try hardware or  
> software.

If you can afford two business lines with call waiting and caller ID,
you can afford a BRI.

-Stephen-