[asterisk-users] Why PRI not BRI ?

[Hans Witvliet]

On Mon, 2011-05-30 at 13:57 +0530, virendra bhati wrote:
> Thanks a lot all, 
> Now my view is clear ...
> 
> On Sun, May 29, 2011 at 3:15 PM, Gordon Henderson <gordon
> +asterisk at drogon.net> wrote:
>         On Sun, 29 May 2011, virendra bhati wrote:
>         
>                 Hi List,
>                 
>                 I have stupid question but I want to know it. Why we
>                 use the PRI insted of
>                 BRI ? Just for the sake of number of lines or any
>                 thing else ?
>         
>         
>         It probably depends on your country.
>         
>         In mainland europe (or maybe just Germany), ISDN2e (BRI) is
>         very popular - not uncommon in home installations too.
>         
>         In the UK, it's almost the standard in small businesses - the
>         migration path seems to be from a single line to 3 lines
>         sharing the same number to ISDN2e...
>         
>         There was a push in the UK to support BRI in the home (~10
>         years back, under the name Home Highway), but it came at a
>         time when ADSL was almost upon us, and BT in their infinite
>         wisdom removed a lot of the ISDN features that make it
>         actually useful...
>         
>         I don't think BRI ever caught on in the US - It was analogue
>         or PRI (or channelised/fractional T1 or whatever it's called)
>         Probably made it much easier for the telcos to support (and
>         afford)

Only reason for using bri instead of pri in the number of  voice chanels
and costs. It took ages  before telco's realised that with fractured-E1
they could save a lot of costs (telco/customers) while offering a cheap
upgrade path. At that time that ISDN was introduced, the costs in
installing a pri-interface in the local-exchange was identical to
installing a bri-interface.

Only reason nowadays for using bri instead of pots, is that you get the
incoming speech channel already digitialised.


>                 And why SIP is used for making calls rather then IAX?
>                 Even we know IAX takes
>                 1 channel for making calls?
>         
>         
>         SIP is an open standard that's been around since the late
>         90's. IAX, which is also open and free was only just accepted
>         as a standard last year, but even so, there's inertia. Very
>         few phone manufacturers are using it - why should they, when
>         they've been using SIP for years, and the same PBX that works
>         with IAX also works with SIP... (And does any other PBX
>         support IAX yet?)
>         

Freepbx is the only other afaicr.
Only a limited number of clients.

hw