I presume normal ISDN in the US is charged at a different rate to normal phone calls ?
Here in Ireland ISDN and normal analogue calls are charged at the same rates regardless of wheather they're voice or data.( You pay slightly less than the rental for 2 analogue lines for a BRA ISDN line.)
This means that if you subscribe to a flat rate internet dial-up package (either full flat rate or a fixed number of hours per month) that you have the choice of using 56K or ISDN (at up to 128K depending on the package).
So, with an ISDN line you can get reasonably fast flat rate internet access and phone service down the same line. Generally as ISDN connections only take about 1-2 seconds to establish it's pretty much as good as always on.
The interface consists of a box on the wall with 2 RJ11 ports for analogue phones (behaves just like 2 normal phone lines) and 2 RJ45 ports for digital services (computers or phones).
You can use up to 128K of bandwidth i.e.
2 simultanious phone calls
1 phone call + 64kbps data
or 128kbps data no phone calls. This can be configured so that if a phone rings or someone picks up a phone your data connection drops back to 64Kbps or it can just diver the call to voicemail.
The newer interface boxes even contain a USB port for directly connecting to a PC or Mac without any terminal adaptor.
By default you get 2 phone numbers (with two seperate voicemail boxes) You can assign these to either analogue port or use them for digital stuff.
There are also some nifty features like if someone calls on one of your lines you can transfer them to the other etc.. They also support all of the usual features that you'd find on a phone line (caller ID, call waiting, call return, divertion etc etc.. via the analogue ports or via the digital ports)
Or if you buy a ISDN compatable DECT (Cordless phone) or small PABX unit (typically under €400) you can do a lot of things including buying more numbers to use for Direct inward dialling giving each extension on the PABX its own number for inward calls even though you only have 1 real ISDN line.
There hasn't been that much call for non-switched ISDN (yet). Eircom do provide it but it would be classified as an ISDN leased line and would be ridiculously pricy.
While ISDN is widely available I wouldn't go as far as to say that it's universally available. In some instances the distance to the switch is just too great.
[This message has been edited by djk (edited 11-18-2003).]
