From: malQRMassimilation@gmail.com   
      
   On Sun, May 22, 2022 at 12:11:50PM -0400, Fred Goldstein wrote:   
   > On 5/21/2022 12:36 PM, Bill Horne wrote:   
   > >On 5/19/2022 9:05, Bill Horne wrote:   
   > >>>I was talking to an old friend yesterday, and he told me that he's   
   > >>>been working from home for a while now, and the conversation turned to   
   > >>>ISDN phone service, which I recommend to anyone who can still obtain   
   > >>>it.   
   > >>>   
   > >>>1. Which states still have tariffs for ISDN BRI lines?   
   > >>...   
   >   
   > ISDN Basic Rate Interface (BRI) is generally no longer available in   
   > the US. Verizon and I think ATT long ago gave formal notice of   
   > discontinuance or grandfathering. Maybe Qwest, pre-Century, didn't   
   > bother, so it may still be on the books there. But few know how to   
   > provision it. Many of the switches that provided it (mainly 5ESS and   
   > DMS-100 in the US) no longer are in service. It was useful, especially   
   > for broadcasters doing remote feeds. It was better than a modem for   
   > Internet access, and that's what killed it as it was coming out in the   
   > early 1990s -- the Bells hated the Internet, which broke their   
   > locality-based business model, and while they couldn't attack modem   
   > users per se, they could at least attack the most obvious Internet   
   > user group, non-Centrex ISDN BRI users. Bell Atlantic l/k/a Verizon   
   > was also fanatical in those days about selling Centrex, and saw ISDN   
   > BRI as a tool for Centrex feature phones, but that was about it. That   
   > business has faded out too.   
      
   I don't often disagree with Fred on issues like ISDN, but I'm going to   
   advance a different theory: I had a chance to test an ISDN line at my   
   home near Boston, back around 1994 or so, and I was /very/ surprised to   
   find that getting a 64Kbps connection on either of the "Bearer"   
   channels was very difficult.   
      
   It turned out that the only solution was to redial several times, and   
   sooner or later I'd get a 64Kbps connection. After 15 or 20 minutes of   
   dialing and redialing, I might end up with two 64Kbps "Bearer"   
   connections to The Well, an ISP which served ISDN customers, and I   
   could bind them together to obtain a 128 Kbps Internet connection.   
      
   When I investigated, I quickly found out that almost all of the   
   T-Carrier systems connecting the central office to its Tandems were   
   not equipped for "8 bit clean" connections. In other words, the   
   connections from the CO to Tandem offices were designed for the   
   original T-Carrier "robbed bit" signalling paradigm, and were not   
   capable of delivering 64Kbps data connections.   
      
   I think Verizon - and probably the other Baby Bells - wanted to avoid   
   the expense of retraining a unionized workforce to make use of the   
   8-bit-clean fiber-optic channels just being introduced at the   
   time. The company would have had to retrain not only the "CO"   
   technicians, but also the provisioning specialists responsible for   
   specifying the number and type of trunks for each CO to use for each   
   service. Even though ISDN data calls were billed per-minute, the   
   accountants most likely projected more cost than revenue.   
      
   Bill   
      
   --   
   Bill Horne   
   (Please remove QRM from my email address if you write to me directly)   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)