Video Conf Lines

jamesd

I have 3 isdn lines for running my video conf (3 * 128K)
The rent and the usage charges on this is hign enough so I want to see is there another way around this as in asdl ?
I would not mind if it was down for 5 days as I know this is the responce time on asdl-

What are peoples views on this or has anyone one this way?

Thanks
James

steve-hosting36

Why not get a 256k/512k leased line?

jamesd

Leased would be alot dearer - It's mainly the rent I want to reduce as the rent of 3 lines is dear.

steve-hosting36

You'd be surprised how little line rental on a leased line is these days

SImple question - do you 'need' all three lines?

jamesd

Rental of a 128K Leased line is nearly €6K

Yes need all 3 lines for the Quality

BogoBot

I think the question here is what do you use it for? We have a couple of Vtel & Pict video conferencing systems around this company which used to run on ISDN. We now run them over IP (over our frame relay). This drastically reduced the cost as we didn't need the ISDN lines and were using bandwidth we were already paying for. The flip side is that conferencing with another firm outside our trusted network is more difficult. All sorts of 'putting-an-unknown-quantity-in-the-DMZ' type nightmares.

Who/what is usually on the other end of your conferencing unit?

Bogobot.

steve-hosting36

Depending hugely on your location, you should be able to get a 512k line for less than 4k per year

Again, depends on location and availability of carriers, also, if you already have a primary rate line installed for your phone system, why not piggy back on that?

jamesd

@ BogoBot :
Normally Customers on the end of the line -So wouldnt like them inside.

steve-hosting36:
A 128K leasedline in Athlone is 5 - 6K a year.
Primary rate line - I Like this idea- has anyone done it? The machine is used once a week so this would be fine-

steve-hosting36

Installation on a PRI line is about 3-5k, but line rental runs to about 250-300 per month, and yu get 30 64k digital channels.

Most modern phone systems/pabx can talk to a video conference set-up and will 'grab' channels on the PRI as needed. The same principal can be used for net access, with the internet usage set from 64k-256k as required (or more or less).

If you already have a PRI (or fractional PRI) installed for your phones, then yu probably already have all u need to make this work.

jamesd

@ steve-hosting36 - Yes we already have a PRI line
I will look into getting someone to see how do we get it to talk to our video conf machine.