🚀 go-pugleaf

In article presence@MUNGEpanix.com says...
> The same type of idiots that made LDAP came up with ISDN as a solution to 
> a problem that never existed. Like anything from a committee with no real 
> technical skills or real life experience, it was far too complex and 
> offered nothing anybody really wanted.

ISDN certainly wasn't complex by today's standards.  Running a digital 
protocol on a digital switch is far simpler than detecting DTMF, doing 
a/d, and providing ring and tone cadences.  What made ISDN not feasible 
in the US is no one could agree on a standard.  My memory might be off 
but there was National ISDN standard 1 and then NI2 and then maybe more 
and even with those standards the switch manufacturers implemented the 
protocols differently.  So if you had some new whiz bang phone you had 
to set an option for the type of switch you're connected to.  The phone 
makers had to design to all implementations.  This makes mass producing 
CPE rather difficult.  In Europe they had ETSI which defined the ISDN 
interface for the entire continent and whatever other country wanted to 
comply.  This allowed CPE makers to design and support a single 
interface able to sell in all ETSI markets which allowed their costs to 
decrease.  I think at one point in Germany all new phone deployments 
were ISDN, thus, they could upgrade all their line units from analog to 
digital which is the natural progression for all telecom.  The phone 
companies in this country didn't really want it and why should they 
upgrade their equipment when it's already paid for and still works.  
It's not like they have any competitors breathing down their necks.

Also, why the hate on LDAP?  Just curious.  What do you prefer instead 
of LDAP?


> Sadly, the committee or whoever that came up with ISDN seemed to think 
> these were the people that would want it. So obviously since nobody aside 
> from 14 businesses used it, it was hard to get for anybody else.

ISDN does have value and at the time provided much better speeds than 
modems.

> I lived at one place that I wanted ISDN at. AT&T said my CO had no 
capable 
> switch, but they could run the line over from another CO for only 
> $285/month or something weird like that.

That's what happens when you let a monopoly run things.  They simply 
don't care.