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                                                        The Florida SunFlash

                            Why I want ISDN
                  Innovations Subscribers DO Want Now

SunFLASH Vol 49 #14					        January 1993 
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This is an excellent article from the usenet group comp.dcom.isdn
that summarizes what one person, ketil@edb.tih.no (Ketil Albertsen,TIH),
wants out of ISDN. -johnj
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What *I* want (but that may be different from what the original poster
wants!) is to have my PC control the phone. Essentially, I must have 
access to the D channel: 

When my old mother calls when I am out, a digitized message to her 
personally (identified by the caller ID field of the setup message)
is played back. When they call from one of those telemarketing companies,
I want to return either a busy signal or a rather nasty answering
machine message. If someone calls after 11 o'clock at night, I want
them to know that I am sleeping, asking them to reconsider before my
phone rings to wake me up. Similar when I am present at work, but busy
with a meeting. (Option: You will break through if you know the secret
interrupt code, to be keyed in by you before my phone will ring!)

I want my PC to keep track of who tried to call me, at what times,
when I was out. I want my PC to keep a complete account of my outgoing 
phone calls, and optionally the incoming ones as well.

I want the capability to record my phone calls digitally.

I want the PC to implement a callback facility for incoming data 
connections, as a security measure. And at work, to let my employer
pay the phone bill when I connect from home.

I want my PC to present the name of the caller on the screen, if known, 
before I lift the receiver. If another call arrives while I am in another 
one, I want the id (name, if available) to be displayed so that I can see 
if I want to terminate or park the first call. And buttons to let me
switch between the calls. For (automated) collect calls, I would like a 
user interface with buttons for 'accept' and 'reject'. There are lots of
other similar things that could be made with a much more informative and
easy to use interface.

I want an integrated phone book - double click on the list box entry,
and the selected number is called. I can do that with a modem interface,
too, but then I probably must do some fixup to make it give the audio 
receiver control when the called party answers. And it probably won't do 
it with a phone receiver plugged into my PC, but some phone that I 
might have to raise up to get.

I want a nice, Windows-based interface for setting up and organizing a 
multiple party connection (phone conference). Doing that with the numeric 
keys on your phone is not exactly user friendly.

When my daughter grows older, I want calls from her lover(s) to be
routed directly to the phone in her room. (Notice that I want the PC
to keep track of all calls, too...)

ISDN subaddressing is "logical". I want to be able to control the routing, 
so that eg. daddy's subaddress can be switched from the living room phone 
to the basement one when I go down to play my hobbies. That lover routing 
could also be based on sub-addresses rather than caller IDs.
(Yes, this is having the pc act as an NT2. I want that!)

I want the PC to stop "unauthorized" long-distance calls. (Of course
calling grandma is authorized...)

Obviously, I also want my PC to have access to X.25 across the B channel.
If I use a plain modem, the only way to get to X.25 will be to call
some PAD service; that is NOT what I want!

And I want to transmit/accept G4 fax data directly to my PC. At least in
Europe, where ISDN may be a greater success than in the US (at least the
first 5-10 years), I wouldn't expect very many modem-based G4-faxes;
they are all ISDN based.

I want to be able to make a user friendly, Windows-based interface to the 
host of information bases available through the phone. That could be done 
with modem interconnect too, but friendliness also has to do with speed.

Of course I generally want 64 Kbit data transfer capability.

I want to integrate the sound facilities of my PC with the phone - to use 
the phone ADC and DAC and associated circuitry for recording/playback of
sound files. I know more efficient compression algorithms than G.722
exist, but it isn't that bad (7 kHz bandwidth, roughly 45 dB S/N, at 6-8
kbytes/sec), and it is *standard*.

If I forget to either order or cancel the book-of-the-month, I want my 
PC to cancel it automatically at the order deadline. (Again, possible by 
modem, but easier, faster and cheaper by direct ISDN.

I want the option to be able to digitally manipulate the speech signal 
before transmission or after reception. (I didn't say 'encryption' - at 
least not very loudly.)

I want to be able to cost optimize my data traffic: If I request an speech 
grade 3.1 kHz line, they won't charge me for a 64 kbit transparent, even 
when that is what I get. So I can make use of 64 kbit at the price of 3.1 
kHz. (If I do *not* get a 64 kbit line, I can disconnect immediately and 
request a higher grade line until I get one that forces them to give
me one, but at the lowest possible cost.) (This one is nasty, I know!)

And finally, I would very much like to have a true demonstration system 
for my students, where they can learn the I.451/Q.931 protocol by trying 
it out in practice, rather than simply read about it.

I have access to ISDN at work (not at home yet), so if you would like to
use me as a beta tester for an ISDN pc-card, I would be happy... :-)

(I know that there are a few available, but I haven't seen one with a very
impressive software interface for my own projects yet. Impressive: Maybe. 
Adhering to standards: Rarely. Decent programming interface: No, not one. 
Terrible ones, all of them - the possibly impressive part is all in closed 
and complete end user functions, not accessible to other software.)

Ketil Albertsen, College lecturer
Trondheim College of Engineering (TIH), dept of Comp.Sci
Trondheim, Norway.

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