Do You Remember ISDN?

3 pointsposted 8 hours ago
by linsomniac
(youtube.com)

5 Comments

f30e3dfed1c9

5 minutes ago

Sure. The first internet connection where I worked in the 1990s was ISDN with (I think) an Ascend P50 router. Don't remember what it cost. Was next upgraded to a VDSL connection that ran at T1 speed, 1.544 Mbps.

iwanttocomment

8 hours ago

Had ISDN in the mid-90s back when I worked for an ISP. Wasn't expensive from my telco, 40 1996 dollars a month and the cost of a Motorola BitSURFR Pro. Got dial-up bonding working on the ISP side. It could "ring through" one of the B-channels when a call came in and stay connected on the other. A wonderful time.

Rotundo

8 hours ago

I remember. It was very expensive for not a lot of extra bandwidth. You also needed a special ISDN phone or a, again expensive, box to convert the signal to normal POTS.

Not long after the cable company started offering 'broadband' at 115 kbps, quickly upgraded to 512kbps.

ISDN was a complete non-starter in my locale.

LargoLasskhyfv

6 hours ago

In my locale it was much cheaper, because of massive push via subsidies from former gov-telco. We also had 2 x 64kb/s channels, for 128kb/s bundled(dynamically/on demand), plus signalling channel. Since it was so widespread you actually had a chance to enjoy very good voice quality, which often is still unsurpassed, today. Especially regarding latency. Again because of the wide availability, the not so special phones weren't that expensive, and adapter boxes neither. But nobody wanted these anyway, because old phones didn't give the good voice quality.