Hello! Several of my customers would like to add a backup to their Internet connection. ISDN is a good solution: decently fast for a dial-up-type connection, yet still faily affordable. While I was at it, I decided to look at a couple of more creative telephone service options to possibly improve their service or lower costs at the same time. These customers range from having just a couple of POTS lines without a key system up to as many as 18 POTS lines into systems such as AT&T Merlin or Nortel Norstar systems.
My first thought on the higher end was a PRI line. However, the cost seems *very* prohibitive. The average cost for a PRI line was $550/month, just for "dial tone"! I've heard others say that PRI becomes cost effective in the 8 line range, but the cost for the office with 14 lines ($25/line * 14 lines) is only $350. It would take 22 lines before the PRI would equal the cost of individual POTS lines! As an aside, I did a survey of several of my customers with 10-30 employees. Most of them have POTS lines only (from between 4 and 10) fed into some sort of PBX. Only one of them has a PRI line, and they wish they hadn't gone that way: they thought they would need more lines than they do, and now they feel that they're way over-buying. Am I missing something? When is a PRI competitive with POTS? And if I'm not missing something, is there an alternative between POTS and a PRI, particularly for 5-15 lines? None of the telephone companies I called offered channelized T1 options for local service (let alone frac-T1), only PRI. Are there other options? Finally, any alternatives for smaller companies? I tried to get a simple BRI ISDN line for Internet backup for the company with 18 POTS lines. [EMAIL PROTECTED]@ Ameritech (excuse me, SBC) charges $10/month more if you don't sign a 36-month contract and wouldn't give it to them without a credit check, several pieces of company information, the names and telephone numbers of at least two officers of the company and a personal guarantee from an officer! This for a customer who has had 18 POTS lines for *15* YEARS! I hate SBC... Thank you for reading my rant. I would greatly appreciate any information or suggestions you might be able to give me. Tim Massey _______________________________________________ Asterisk-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
