Sorry I'm a little late to the thread but this question has puzzled me as well. My key thing for me is hardware.<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 6/27/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">Joe Greco</b> <<a href="mailto:jgreco@ns.sol.net">
jgreco@ns.sol.net</a>> wrote:</span><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">> Thoughts? Who here has used BRI in North America? And when you did, what
<br>> interface hardware did you use?<br><br>Well, at the time, there was pretty much nothing that was considered to be<br>"reliably" supported by Asterisk for NA BRI.<br><br>I picked up an Adtran Atlas 550 with a 4BRI-U interface and an octal FXS,
<br>and I use the unit's built-in T1 network port to connect to an Asterisk<br>box. This works nicely, except for the things for which it doesn't work<br>nicely. The box is fundamentally being used as a BRI<->PRI translator,
<br>but gives me some neat extras. .....</blockquote><div><br>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.
<br><br>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. <br><br>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?
<br><br>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.
<br><br>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.
<br><br>Dave<br></div></div>