I am setting up a voice over studio and will hopefully be using ISDN to receive transmissions from voice talent nationwide. I have read that I need an ISDN line run to my business. I am currently selecting a business location, so I am trying to talk to the phone company to see if ISDN line availability will be a problem and if so where I would need to locate my business in order to have a functional ISDN line run to my site. Are there different types of ISDN lines? Because looking at the phone company's site, they seem to say in some places that ISDN is very limited in availability and in other places that it's quite available and no big deal to link up to. What specific technical questions do I need to ask my phone company to find out the ISDN line availabilty?
Do I indeed need to run an ISDN line to my site (as opposed to using existing phone lines)? What are the typical costs for running a line like that?

Hello Kyle,

To receive ISDN transmissions from voice talent you will not only need an ISDN line, but you will also need an ISDN codec. The voice talent will also have an ISDN codec. For a session your ISDN codec will connect to the codec of the talent and the two codecs will create a high quality bidirectional audio link over the ISDN line.

To make ISDN connections you need an ISDN line. You can not use standard phonelines with ISDN codecs I'm afraid. There are special codecs that allow you to use standard phone lines, but these are not compatible with ISDN codecs and are not used for voice over sessions.

In Europe all countries use the same flavour of ISDN. In the USA there are different types but you just set your codec up for your local flavour and you're fine.

Your other questions mainly depend on where you live. On the southern tip of the Northpole it is probably quite a hassle to get an ISDN line... And it will be quite expensive... The best advise I can give you on that point is to talk to a number of phone companies in the areas your looking at to see the price differences. Don't only look at the setup costs but also look at the costs for connections since you are expecting to make a lot of those.

The one thing that is important though is that you will need to be able to make and accept local and long distance data calls (as well as voice calls).  When you ask your phone company for the ISDN line quote, please ensure that these data calls are part of it!

Best regards,

Edwin.

Hello. I need to connect to Hamburg with my cdq Prima 120 but the other side has APTX. It's not working. What should I do? ???
Do you know anybody in Hamburg that has a Prima we can connect to?

You need a bridge!

I'm not sure where you're located, but if in the U.S., check:

http://www.digifon.com/

CC