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

[Stephen Bosch]

Jeremy Mann wrote:
>> you would think the telcos would be more interested in selling this
>> to small/medium businesses that are not ready for a voice pri but
>> it
> 
> Since when to the telcos have the consumer's best interest in mind?
> They can sell you a PRI at full loop cost with a smaller number of
> channels in the hopes you will add to it, they will then charge you
> an "upgrade fee" or some other inflated installation cost when in
> reality it is almost 0 work to reprovision, pure profit for them.

People forget that the PSTN network was very expensive to build in the
first place, which is why we had monopolies; the regulation of the
market amounted to a form of subsidy.

With that regulatory impetus gone, there's little incentive for the
telcos to maintain their last-mile wireline infrastructure. There's
precious little money in it. Under those circumstances, they can be
expected to tweak things to make them worthwhile.

I'm not defending them -- I'm just pointing out that this isn't just a
simple case of "the damn telcos". We're living in a world of our own
making. It's the price of having cheap long distance.

> ATT is/was doing buyback promotions recently for 5 analog lines + a
> full Data T1 for around $425 total(including loop cost), that's a
> steal and frankly we would have been crazy to request BRI service.

I cannot get partial PRI with fewer than 10 channels around here, so
there's really *no* choice.

-Stephen-