ISDN Telephone Systems

Typical Scenario

Take a pub or small restaurant. Normally the bar, kitchen, dinning room, managers office would each have an extension. On top of this there is probably a pay phone, fax and Internet access for email making seven extensions in all. A basic ISDN line with two channels could provide two concurrent connections to the outside world for a line rental of £33 per month and calls at 1.95p a minute anywhere in the UK. The PABX to handle this costs less than £300 outright, works with cheap analogue phones, answering machines, faxes and any ISDN terminal adapter or modem for Internet access.

An analogue PABX could juggle the two lines but would be much harder to set up and would be slower on the Internet. If the pub has a couple of guest rooms with their own direct dial phones analogue switch would really start to struggle with a budget of less than £1,000 whereas an ISDN system is getting into its stride due to the flexibility of direct dial to the desktop through the use of virtual numbers.