Some of the services envisioned as being delivered over ISDN

Among the kinds of data that can be moved over the 64 kbit/s channels are pulse-code modulated voice calls, providing access to the traditional voice PSTN. This information can be passed between the network and the user end-point at call set-up time. In North America, ISDN is now used mostly as an alternative to analog connections, most commonly for Internet access.

Some of the services envisioned as being delivered over ISDN are now delivered over the Internet instead. In Europe, and in Germany in particular, ISDN has been successfully marketed as a phone with features, as opposed to a POTS phone with few or no features. Meanwhile, features that were first available with ISDN (such as Three-Way Calling, Call Forwarding, Caller ID, etc.) are now commonly available for ordinary analog phones as well, eliminating this advantage of ISDN.

Another advantage of ISDN was the possibility of multiple simultaneous calls (one call per B channel), e.g. for big families, but with the increased popularity and reduced prices of mobile telephony this has become less interesting as well, making ISDN unappealing to the private customer. However, ISDN is typically more reliable than POTS, and has a significantly faster call setup time compared with POTS, and IP connections over ISDN typically have some 30–35ms round trip time, as opposed to 120–180ms (both measured with otherwise unused lines) over 56k or V.34/V.92 modems, making ISDN more reliable and more efficient for telecommuters.

Where an analog connection requires a modem, an ISDN connection requires a terminal adapter (TA). The function of an ISDN terminal adapter is often delivered in the form of a PC card with an S/T interface, and single-chip solutions seem to exist, considering the plethora of combined ISDN- and ADSL-routers.

ISDN is commonly used in radio broadcasting. Since ISDN provides a high quality connection this assists in delivering good quality audio for transmission in radio. Most radio studios are equipped with ISDN lines as their main form of communication with other studios or standard phone lines. Equipment made by companies such as Telos/Omnia (the popular Zephyr codec), Comrex, Tieline and others are used regularly by radio broadcasters. Almost all live sports broadcasts on radio are backhauled to their main studios via ISDN connections.

December 14, 2011

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