🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <5ihl0n$1vh@camel1.mindspring.com>
           fdrennon@pobox.com "Floyd Drennon" writes:

> In message <grahampvw42eug.fsf@barnowl.demon.co.uk> - Graham Murray
> <graham@barnowl.demon.co.uk>09 Apr 1997 19:09:11 +0000 writes:
> 
> :> Given that use of X2 requires that the 'master' site must be connected
> :> via ISDN, will there be many people who have more than one D/A
> :> conversion in the path?  With the telecos having fully digital
> :> backbones the only D/A conversion should be at the switch serving the
> :> user's local loop. Once the signal has been digitised at the local
> :> switch it makes no sense to add additional pairs of D/A and A/D
> :> conversions in the path, especially as the connection to the ISP is
> :> digital. 
> 
> You folks keep starting from a false assumption.  The telcos in some
> areas are NOT fully digital.  I talked with Bell South representatives
> last August.  They told me then they *hoped* to be converted to fully
> digital by 1998.

But Graham is a Demon customer, posting from a .co.uk address into the
newsgroup demon.tech.modems --- the whole of the UK has had a fully-
digital backbone for at least two years (possibly longer).  Moreover,
there's only a very few non-digital electronic exchanges left (something
well down in the low single figures as a percentage) --- and absolutely
no mechanical ones whatsoever.  We hear rumours from time to time that
the US phone system is still somewhat clunky: your riposte sounds as if
that's true!  If so, then folks'll need to wait until the system is
"clean", such that they can manage consistent 28k8 or 33k6 connections
before starting to hanker after stop-gap "solutions2 such as x2.

If only BT would install ISDN at sensible prices, and with sensible
rentals, then no one would even countenance wasting time with x2 or
k56flex over here.  ISPs like Demon offer ISDN connections to their
service at no additional charge, and the cost of ISDN calls through BT is
identical to that for POTS.  Moreover, it's possible to buy an ISDN card
for a PC, together with a BRI PABX with 8 POTS outlets, for about GBP300
altogether.  It's only the stupidity of BT in not selling ISDN into the
domestic market, at a sensible price, that stops us having 100,000
residential customers, as Deutsche Telekom has.

Of course, before Merkins could follow this revolution, they'd have to
free up the wasted 8th bit in the frame, which is responsible for US ISDN
being only 56kbps instead of the international 64000 :-)

-- 
Brian {Hamilton Kelly}                                         bhk@dsl.co.uk
    "We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce
     the Complete Works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know
     this is not true."            Robert Wilensky, University of California