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I wonder, were there any countries where ISDN BRI became a "default" service, i.e. where it was normal for it to be installed in every household to the same ext
by hlandau 5y ago
I wonder, were there any countries where ISDN BRI became a "default" service, i.e. where it was normal for it to be installed in every household to the same extent POTS was?
- pantalaimon 5y agoISDN was pretty prevalent in Germany, but it always would cost a premium compared to POTS
- LargoLasskhyfv 5y agoNot really true from the times I remember, because heavily subsidised.
- wink 5y agoI don't remember the base price, but I'm pretty sure for Telekom there was like a 5-10 DM premium for ISDN over analog, at least in 98-2000
- the_only_law 5y agoOne thing that still confuses me about ISDN is that despite most of it being standardized in a series of ITU specifications, I see a lot of phones and other TE's advertise support for vendor specific protocols and other standards (National ISDN protocols, special 5ESS protocols and later things like DSS1) What I don't get is the signalling is all standardized (LAPD, X.25 or maybe Frame Relay at layer 2, and Q.931 at layer 3) and the actual data should just transparent to the protocol and only relevant to the devie function (I imagine a typical voice call would just alaw or ulaw data). So unless there's something going in the upper layers of an established call, why the need for various proprietary protocols that from the sounds of it are incompatible. There are devices and tools to simulate this proprietary protocols, so I suppose in theory I could reverse them, but they’re either rare to come by or very expensive for a random hobbyist such as myself.
- ahofmann 5y agoISDN was used a lot in Germany and was disabled just a few years ago. I still remember the agony of getting my Linux PC to work with the Fritz!Card (on the ISA bus) to finally be able to be online for 3 cents a minute on the Internet. ISDN was really fast and extremely stable though.
- LargoLasskhyfv 5y agoHehehe. Wrong move :-) Should have used something with either a chip from Cologne Chip Design, or the other big asian player whose name I can't remember at the moment. Anyways, both were way more affordable and had stable drivers. Basically looking at what Isdn4Linux, and later HISAX supported well.
- wink 5y agoor maybe just a little too early. I used several PCI Fritz! cards back then on Windows and Linux and they worked flawlessly, for years.
- ac29 5y agoI seem to recall in the US, there was a narrow window of time where ISDN was interesting - one of my parents had an ISDN connection to their office installed in our house. Within a couple years, the vastly faster ADSL became available followed shortly thereafter by cable internet.
- toast0 5y agoIIRC, in California, ISDN only had a per minute tarrif (which would run at 2x if you used both B channels) and you usually had to pay your ISP more too, although I heard after 56k modems were widely deployed, you could use one B channel and usually get a 64k (both ways) connection for regular dialup cost.
- kalleboo 5y agoIn Sweden, ISDN was the default for anyone who wanted 2 phone lines (i.e. anyone who was self-employed and needed a business phone line)