*BSD News Article 93956


Return to BSD News archive

Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!feed1.news.erols.com!howland.erols.net!news.mathworks.com!fu-berlin.de!irz401!orion.sax.de!uriah.heep!news
From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Cheap ISDN solutions [was: What's the state of ISDN support?]
Date: 19 Apr 1997 16:27:14 GMT
Organization: Private BSD site, Dresden
Lines: 36
Message-ID: <5jarp2$h5d@uriah.heep.sax.de>
References: <33303AE2.503C@cmr.no> <5gqhjt$k3t$1@gail.ripco.com>
  <333226A6.ABD322C@freebsd.org> <5hqooq$gtn@ui-gate.utell.co.uk>
  <33423F01.167EB0E7@net-tel.co.uk> <5hvtj8$e44@ui-gate.utell.co.uk>
  <139@fridaycs.win-uk.net> <861220198.962@dejanews.com>
  <5j5efb$qjv@news.mel.aone.net.au>
  <s9npvvs7iuv.fsf@suncog13.forwiss.tu-muenchen.de>
Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de (Joerg Wunsch)
NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost.heep.sax.de
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
X-Newsreader: knews 0.9.6
X-Phone: +49-351-2012 669
X-PGP-Fingerprint: DC 47 E6 E4 FF A6 E9 8F  93 21 E0 7D F9 12 D6 4E
Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:39376


Walter Hafner <hafner@suncog13.forwiss.tu-muenchen.de> wrote:

> Same over here in Germany.
> 
> But we face a different problem: In Germany, the acceptance of ISDN is
> _much_ higher than it is in different countries. I have no statistics at
> hand, sorry, but I know that the ISDN/inhabitants ratio is much bigger
> in Germany that it is e.g. in the USA.

That's simply since there aren't many alternatives.  Unlike the US,
Germany doesn't have many usable other options for digital connections
(and let's face it, when it comes to IP encapsulation, ISDN sucks
rocks since it provides voice grade reliability which is plain
overkill for IP).  OTOH, the Deutsche Telekom apparently realized that
the local infrastructure (the wiring to the customers) is the most
expensive part, and with more and more customers demanding two lines,
they save half of this infrastructure thus half of the costs.  That's
what i assume why they have been pushing this technology (and given
their previous burocracy-like behaviour, it's surprising that they now
got a feeling for how to satisfy both their own interests and those of
the customers).

Note that also, the acceptance of ISDN in the US is way lower since
it's not really pushed is *I*SDN there.  In Germany, the telco
provides you with the network termination, thus effectively really
provides you with an S0 bus to put your equipment on.  In the US, you
have to buy your own network terminator, which leads to devices that
have it built in (and no S0 bus to the outside), so the entire idea of
ISDN is defeated, it's a one-service data network then.

-- 
cheers, J"org

joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE
Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)