[ale] ISDN

[Susan Liebeskind]

> There is no such thing as a dedicated isdn line anymore (from the telco's
> perspective)  You can get "dedicated" service from many providers but you
> will pay big $$ in phone rates if you go over the 200 or 320 hours (depends
> on plan) per month.  Any time after that is 0.01 per minute, which for a
> 320 hour plan in a 31 day month is $254.40 PLUS regular monthly charges.
> And this is for a single B chanel. The charges for 128k access would be
> ~$450.00 /month total if you left the thing up continously. This doesn't
> include the isp charges.

I looked into this a bit earlier in the summer.   There is a company
called ComStar Communications here in town which provides dedicated 24
x 7 ISDN lines to commercial customers.  The twist for their ISDN
services is that *ComStar* initiates the ISDN connection, not its
customers.  Keep in mind that the tariff on >320 hours comes on
*outgoing* calls only.  Since ComStar makes the call to your ISDN
modem to initiate the connection, you never get hit with the excess
charges.  (And I know they have Linux folks who monitor and post on the
list. ) The ISP charges were around $250/month for a B channel, if I
remember right.

Note: I am in no way affiliated with ComStar, and for all I know things
might have changed between July and October.  But it's a clever,
cost effective and legal workaround to the nasty tariff charges.

----


There is another company called America.Net which offers ISDN on demand
for $175/mo.  It requires that you buy an Ascend router, and while you 
don't have dedicated access, they claim that connection is almost
instantaneous.  It too is a neat approach, but I was distinctly underwhelmed
by the technical sales folks.  But this latter program had the advantage
of being available to personal customers, I think...  

My $0.02. Take it for what it is worth.

Susan



-- 
===========================================================================
Susan Liebeskind (susan.liebeskind at gtri.gatech.edu) 
GTRI/ITTL/CSITD
347 Ferst St
Atlanta, GA  30332-0817				 Phone 404-894-4266