On Sat, 28 Jun 2003, Wolfgang S. Rupprecht wrote:

> > In the U.S., ISDN has seemed to largely be the technology that never was.
> > (Technically, it's out there.  I think that my ISP offers it...  But if
> > memory serves, prices are comparable to DSL, with lower performance,
> > and many people also have cablemodem options.  Fewer and fewer people
> > are out of reach of *both* DSL and cablemodem, while ISDN isn't a big
> > enough hop up from modems for many.)
>
> Sadly ISDN was out and flopped in the US long before cable modems or
> later ADSL.  One thing that killed it was that the phone companies
> absolutely refused to put it out with pricing similar to residential
> service using plain old (analog) phones.  Very few people were going
> to put up with per-minute charges on ISDN if they could get free
> analog calls.

That's not at all true. The tariff price for area A calls is exactly
the same for ISDN as for analog. Long distance and intra-lata
providers don't charge any differently, either. The price for a 1B is
approximately the same as for an analog line. The equipment is more
expensive, but then you get more for it (two phones numbers, for
starters). Now get this -- ISP's in the U.S charge *the* *same*
*price* for a clean digital 64K ISDN connection as for an analog 28K
connection (which only says its connecting at 52K), and there's hardly
any location in the country where you could get analog but not ISDN.

If you're comparing residential DSL or residential cable with
nailed-up ISDN, that's apples and oranges. Once you start looking at
providers that'll give you static IP's and let you run services, the
price gap closes. Business don't get untimed calls in any case, so
for them, ISDN is the stand out option.

> I'm just starting to look around at making a digital answering
> machine.  I've got a multi-gig disk sitting here waiting to store my
> phone messages and to do a bit of pre-screening of telemarketing calls
> coming from "Out Of Area".

You haven't heard the news? There's a national don't-call list now:

    http://donotcall.gov

Frederick