On Sat, May 28, 2022 at 04:12:50PM -0400, David wrote:

Fred Goldstein said:

ISDN Basic Rate Interface (BRI) is generally no longer available in
the US.

...

But few know how to provision it. Many of the switches that
provided it (mainly 5ESS and DMS-100 in the US) no longer are in
service.

I suspect that last sentence is a major aspect. VZ at least is
actively working to get rid of their 5ESS's. A benefactor of their
recent buyout told me that the ongoing software charges were
"onerous"....

It must be the heat: I'm just not getting the subtext of messages today.

"A benefactor of " ... *whose* recent buyout, of whom?

What software charges? Do you mean the fees charged for the version of
Unix used in the 5E switch? Come to think of it, who owns that switch
design now?

Bill, who is still feeling old.

--
Bill Horne
(Please remove QRM from my email address to write to me directly)

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Fred Goldstein said:

ISDN Basic Rate Interface (BRI) is generally no longer available in
the US.

...

But few know how to provision it. Many of the switches that
provided it (mainly 5ESS and DMS-100 in the US) no longer are in
service.

I suspect that last sentence is a major aspect. VZ at least is
actively working to get rid of their 5ESS's. A benefactor of their
recent buyout told me that the ongoing software charges were
"onerous"....

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First, my source was a VZ employee who accepted their buyout offer to
reduce manpower, and left. Second, the charges he mentioned are the
ongoing application software (called a "Generic") license fees on a
5ESS. The operating companies didn't just pay WECO to buy the hardware,
they also had stiff ?monthly/yearly? license fees to use the 5ESS
Generic that made them work.

Why would the bells hate the Internet?

The Bell's were welded to their "If only we can charge local calls by
the minute, it would be great..." thinking.

They hated dialup, be it POTS or ISDN, because it shredded their
predicted call durations, utilization of switch resources and
interoffice trunkage.

People like me would make one 9c call, and leave it up. I had calls that
would stay up for 999 hours before my router would drop the call when it reached 1000.

PLUS:
Ma Bell had anticipated that CLEC-fed businesses would call LEC-served residences. Under Her insistence, the originating {C}LEC would pay the terminating {C}LEC compensation per minute.

But the ISP's, soon tired of dealing with LEC's unwilling/unable to make
large dial-in modem pools function, switched to CLEC's who would help
them. So instead of an income stream, it was a huge drain. Fred
Goldstein can likely comment on the ensuing legal fights.

Centrex:
I don't know if is less popular it is now than it was, but in the DC
region, it was a major LEC income stream. The reason is only the tiniest
USGovt agency fits into one building; most are spread out between many,
often scattered between DC, MD & VA locations. Centrex gave them 4 or 5
digit calling between all their offices. Further, ISDN Centrex gave the
boss a fancy feature phone with many buttons, vs. a POTS 2500 set.

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