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

[Stephen Bosch]

Greg Oliver wrote:
> On Wed, 2007-06-27 at 14:32 -0600, Stephen Bosch wrote:
>> Hi, folks:
>>
> <Snip>
>> Thoughts? Who here has used BRI in North America? And when you did, what
>> interface hardware did you use?
>>
>> -Stephen-
>>
>> ____
> 
> I grew up on BRI when the internet first started taking off here.  All
> terminated into Ascend Pipeline 50 or 25 routers.  Gave 2 B and dynamic
> 128Kb/s bandwidth.
> 
> With that said, the equipment to provision BRI on a class 5 switch here
> is another story.  If the building they are delivering to does not have
> the right DLC cards, etc - it is usually chaeper for them to send a DS1
> and pull 2 analog channels from it, and that is why you see BRI more
> exxpensive.

That's kind of a chicken-egg problem. If BRI isn't
advertised/offered/encouraged, then who's going to buy the right cards?

As for the cost: in the example I provided, the difference is barely
there -- if I get two calling features for each line, I'm better off
with BRI on a one year contract.

(Of course, I haven't taken into account analog bundle pricing, which
would bring the cost for features on analog lines down some. But again,
I don't see the difference being very big. It all ends up concentrating
on the same telco equipment anyway.)

> With fiber being deployed to most buildings (or at least RTs) nowadays,
> the line cards do not play a factor since the DLC has to already be
> there.  At the telco I worked, it was our philosophy to put in a mux and
> split out analog before going BRI.  Equipment was cheaper to maintain,
> and provisioners were not burdened with 2 channel isdn.  Now we did sell
> a lot of DS1 and DS3 PRIs for modem service, etc....

Most businesses are using relatively modern PBXs now, so -- provided the
appropriate module is installed in the system -- you should be able to
run the BRI right to the customer premises. The other stuff you describe
just sounds like a way of getting more line density out of older
infrastructure.

-Stephen-