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

[Stephen Bosch]

Dave Donovan wrote:
> Sorry I'm a little late to the thread but this question has puzzled me
> as well.  My key thing for me is hardware.
> 
> On 6/27/07, *Joe Greco* < jgreco at ns.sol.net <mailto:jgreco at ns.sol.net>>
> wrote:
> 
>     > Thoughts? Who here has used BRI in North America? And when you
>     did, what
>     > interface hardware did you use?
> 
>     Well, at the time, there was pretty much nothing that was considered
>     to be
>     "reliably" supported by Asterisk for NA BRI.
> 
>     I picked up an Adtran Atlas 550 with a 4BRI-U interface and an octal
>     FXS,
>     and I use the unit's built-in T1 network port to connect to an Asterisk
>     box.  This works nicely, except for the things for which it doesn't work
>     nicely.  The box is fundamentally being used as a BRI<->PRI translator,
>     but gives me some neat extras.  .....
> 
> 
> Has anyone else seen a working hardware solution that didn't cost an arm
> and a leg?  It seems to me that a BRI card should cost less than $100. 
> I think I remember a German friend telling me that they go for around
> $40 dollars.
> 
> I know that I can get a BRI with voice service out of Bell.  I think
> they have to provide it because of the CRTC tariffs.

The pricing from Telus wasn't that bad; it used to be much more expensive.

> The thing that has stopped me from trying it in the past is the
> uncertainty around hardware.  Do I understand correctly that NA (North
> American?) BRI is different from the European version and that European
> hardware won't work?
> 
> If I could get a card for a few hundred bucks then I'd be willing to
> give this a shot.  Unfortunately, I can't afford a few grand for the
> Adtran setup described, although it does sound cool and the BRI<->PRI
> conversion approach is a clever way of overcoming the hardware scarcity.

Sangoma just came out with a BRI card. What's missing is a 2B1Q driver.
I am trying to persuade them to write a 2B1Q driver for it. Dave -- if
you would get in touch with them and add your voice to the chorus, it
wouldn't hurt.

I don't know what the price on the Sangoma card is, but it would be a
couple hundred dollars, I suspect. Nowhere near the Adtran contraption
previously described.

The hardware for most cards is the same; the signalling is managed by
the driver. The difference is just in the signalling; the technology is
basically the same.

> For the number of times that I see people trying to get digital style
> features out of analog lines, and banging their head against the wall,
> I'd love to get a BRI working and be able to tell you all how it worked
> out.

There's an untapped market here, for sure.

-Stephen-