On Tuesday 31 January 2006 10:23, David Steele wrote:
> The rep mentioned that the Bell PRIs use the NI2 protocol, whereas the
> US carriers typically provision on NI1.  He's not certain if it'll be an
> issue, but he has had it come up in the past when interfacing with
> systems that Bell has never interfaced with before (although I find it
> difficult to believe that nobody in Canada has hooked up a Bell T1 to an
> Asterisk server before).

National-2 works flawlessly with Asterisk.  I have a Bell Canada PRI (Rate 
Group 4, the "don't use the lube" rate group, to boot) and have been running 
Asterisk with it for the past 18 months without issue.

Even better, they seem to allow you to set Caller ID name and number 
independently, and it carries over to the destination unless it jumps to 
another carrier's switch.   (The first call I made on the PRI with Asterisk 
was to my ex-wife's business number, with a Toronto number and "HINDI 
HOTTIES" for the name.  I wish I had a recording of that call.  :-)

Early audio, RDNIS and ANI are also supported, although ANI seems a little 
funny, especially from cellular numbers.  I have not tried E911 but Bell does 
offer PS/ALI database integration for your numbers (think individual address 
information for each number) for a fee.  For my piddly-ass setup it was not 
worth it, so I just have a 911 address for our BTN, but if you had several 
hundred numbers the PS/ALI access fees make sense.

> My question: has anyone had experience with using a Bell Canada PRI into
> Asterisk?  If so, please let me know if there are any "gotchas" I should
> know about.

Just the pricing.  Technically, it works flawlessly.  7-digit DID 
identification, 35 DIDs.

-A.

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