I often do radio interviews linked to my work, and it's been suggested that I get an ISDN line put in at home... I've no idea how to go about this and am just at the 'putting out feelers' stage

I'd be ever so grateful for some advice - who should I approach and how much might it cost?

Many thanks

Miss Poppy

ISDN is a legacy product that BT offered at an extortionate price and still do if you really want it. A few business still use it but most have probably gone over to ADSL or SDSL. It offers 2 telephone lines at a blisteringly slow 64k on each line or 128k combined. Can be used for voice or data.

http://www.seg.co.uk/products/isdnover.htm

http://business.bt.com/phone-service...ng-plans/isdn/

I use ISDN for radio interviews at work and it doesn't come cheap. You are looking at over £100 per quarter plus the cost of your calls. On top of this, you need an ISDN codec of some kind that will do at least G722. Software versions of this I think probably start at over £500 and you need an ISDN card in your computer. For a hardware based system, you are looking over £3000!!!!

What kind of work do you do? Will work pay for the setup?

Think of ISDN like a telephone connection. You dial a number and connect to another person directly. Except the connection is digital.

This is unlike the internet where you connect into a 'cloud' and the person you are trying to connect to is connecting to the 'cloud' as well but you could go all over the place before connecting to them.

ISDN does have an advantage over internet in that bandwidth (128K) is guaranted, it not effected by what other people are doing so it often used for application that are time sensitive like radio work.

You can get cheaper ISDN systems. This one from Canford for example would do the job.

http://www.canford.co.uk/Products/47...7PV-XJ-headset

Still over a grand though. Mind you no call costs involved as it cannot dial out so the radio studio would have to dial into you.

It also does MPEG 2 as used by the fairly popular CDQ Prima range a lot of broadcasters use so may be a better option than just G722.

Thanks so much - I thought it might have been one of those things which had gone down in price (like so much technology) - but it looks like not...

Someone suggested skype as an option for radio interviews, but some other radio people I spoke to said it could get a bit patch.

This is all great advice though, at least it's giving me more of a sense of what an ISDN line actually is and what it does.. any more tips much appreciated!

An interesting article on the Radio World website - Skype Helps Make Interviews More Flexible

http://www.rwonline.com/article/105294