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

[Stephen Bosch]

Hi, folks:

I remain intrigued by the gap in BRI implementation between North
America and Europe, and I wanted to get feedback from the list members
on the matter. I'm seriously considering making the leap in our office.

In Europe, the idea that an office that does not have enough lines to
justify PRI would use analog lines is perceived as technologically
backwards, and yet that's what happens in offices all over North America
all the time. Finding BRI interfaces for many North American key systems
is difficult.

And all this is in spite of the fact that carriers providing PRI can
also provide BRI. The minimum partial PRI offered here is 10 channels.
What if an office has only 4 lines?

Voice BRI is scarcely advertised. In these parts, Telus does indeed
offer it. (I had to know what I was looking for, though.)

I did some inquiries about monthly fees.

Here's what I was quoted for 2B+D voice service (all these prices are in
Canadian dollars; 1 USD buys 1.05 CAD):

1 Year Contract   $91.75
3 Years Contract $82.50
5 Years Contract $79.85

They are not keen on month-to-month, but I squeezed a price out of them.
It was something like $110 a month (it was not in the formal quote ;) ).

The calling features are packaged as one (for both channels). You can't
mix and match. If I only want caller ID, I'm stuck with everything else,
too.

1 Year contract   $27.90
3 Years contract $27.30
5 Years contract $25.75

I think the month-to-month for this was $29.90.

So, say we take a 1 year contract, with calling features:

$119.65, before taxes (we'll ignore the installation fees for the sake
of this analysis).

Now, comparing this with our current arrangement for two lines, forward
on busy on one and caller ID on both, it comes to $114.17 before taxes.
If one were to go head with the 1 year contract, it's hardly worth the
difference to do analog.

Thoughts? Who here has used BRI in North America? And when you did, what
interface hardware did you use?

-Stephen-