[Asterisk-Users] Is the X100P a WinModem? [OT?]

[Brian Schrock]

A Long time, the bells don't do anything quickly and anything they do, do is
darn screwed up. ISDN was started in the 70's and did not start to get real
push until the mid 90, by then too little too late. What about centrex, they
were so bad at selling it nortel started taking out ads in Ameritechs region
with the phone number for Ameritechs sales group just so they could sell
more equipment. DSL, I remember alot of activity around project Pronto, and
even the guys in charge of it were only doing half heartedly, look how long
it has taken them to deploy. The VP of Operations actually told me that DSL
was only going to harm the company in the long term, he believed in fiber to
the home (probably because of the much juicier profit margins).

Further, what is in it for the bells? They have all of their tariffs in
place and the longer they fight providing VoIP type services to end users
the more profit they can extract from legacy systems. It will happen, but
slower than molasses. The approach they will all take is converting their
core to VoIP and only when another VoIP provider comes into their market and
starts to make inroads into their profits (of a significant nature) will
they do anything.

First they will use regulatory power and the courts to put up as many
roadblocks as they can (they call it raising the barrier to entry) against
you, second they will price existing legacy services against you and finally
they will provide the same services when they have no other options. They
will not willing give away their cash cow.

Knowing that, I think all the fine people on this list who are using
asterisk to solve customers communications problems and provide new, "cool"
features are going to make money, as long as it stays off of the large
players radar. And as long as we do not play the game the exact same way the
bells are.

Also, about the larger density analog cards, what about voicetronix cards.
They have a 12 port, the drivers are not as mature as digiums are, but
perhaps they will get there.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Steven M. Sokol" <ssokol at sokol-associates.com>
To: <asterisk-users at lists.digium.com>
Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2003 5:21 PM
Subject: RE: [Asterisk-Users] Is the X100P a WinModem?


> Coming from the [evil] Dialogic world (where even the drivers cost
> money) the prices Digium is charging seem very reasonable.  New
> single-span Dialogic T1 interfaces cost at least three times ($1225 USD
> was the best price I could find on the D/240PCI-T1) what the single span
> Digium card costs.  THEN ADD THE PRICE OF THE DRIVERS.  THEN ADD THE
> PRICE OF REALLY BAD  TECHNICAL SUPPORT.  THEN ADD THE PRICE OF
> PROPRIETARY APPLICATION SOFTWARE.  It's not pretty.  (However, it has
> fed me and my family pretty well-...)
>
> The Quad-span card is even more of a bargain.  The Intel boys claim that
> they have a serious advantage because they do voice, tone (and sometimes
> fax) encoding/decoding on the board, thus saving the core CPU.  Big
> deal.  Add another CPU.  It don't cost much.  Certainly not as much as
> the Dialogic quad-span DM3 card with the requisite DSPs attached.
>
> What I would love to see from Digium (after the new Wildcard TDM400P
> with FXO support is released) would be a higher density analogue
> platform.  Sure you can keep packing cards in, if you have a high-end
> server with a passive back plane.  But wouldn't it be nice to be able to
> do a 8-FXO x 4-FXS on a single card!  Kind of like the Daytona cards
> that Pika offers.
>
> I know that channel banks can do much the same thing, but that adds one
> more point of complexity and would most likely cost more ($750+ USD for
> the bank + $500 for T100P = $1250 USD) than a good integrated high
> density card.  Just my .02.
>
> Side question:  how long will it be before telcos start offering
> commercial SIP or MGCP or other native VoIP services (over DSL/cable
> copper, fiber, wireless, etc.) and legacy stuff like voice T1 and POTS
> go away?
>
> Cheers
>
> Steven
>
>
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