Re: On-going cost effectiveness of PM3?

Joe McGuckin (joe@via.net)
Sat, 23 Nov 1996 01:34:37 -0800

> However, unless i am asking the wrong question of my telephone company
> (ameritech), a channelized T1 _with a channel bank at the central office_ will
> cost about $300 per month MORE than individual phone lines. The channel bank
> at the central office, i am told, is required to permit users to access any of
> the 24 T1 channels by simply dialing a single phone number as they do now. If
> i could avoid the channel bank, the cost would be some what less.

Unless you are served by one of the last step or crossbar CO's, the CO
shouldn't need a channel bank to mux DS0's onto a DS1.

Almost every metro area is ESS. Whether the CO is NT or WE/ATT (now Lucent?),
they should have DS1 line cards feeding into the switch.

Perhaps the telco rep was trying to say that YOU needed a channel bank
to bust apart the DS1??

Yes, telcos usually add an extra charge for channelized T1. Here in PacBell
land it's about $350 extra.

Why would you willingly pay double the cost per incoming line? How about
remote management and reliability. How about compactness.

Ever been in an MFS colo facility and seen those racks of USR total Control
modems that had "ANS Big Dial" plastered on the front? Thats ANS providing
dial-in lines for AOL. They can fit about 6 forty-eight modem boxes into
a single 19" rack. That's 288 lines. Can you imagine what 288 sportsters,
cables and 10 PM2E's would look like? What a cabling nightmare that would
be! In San Francisco at 444 Market, there are about six of these racks.

-joe