Jason, the guest writer on Avaya’s SIP agenda, has kindly given me some stuff to post while I’m out of the office at the Museum of Telephony. This is the last installment of this series.

Some technologies I never used:

 Other larger stations would use ISDN directly to the hybrid.  It’s my understanding that this is like presenting a PRI directly to the hybrid with no front PBX. It was stable, and the audio quality was as good as the CO’s switch.  In these cases, the caller’s analog or cellular connection was often the limiting factor for audio quality.  I would imagine these are the type of systems used by the big talk show hosts like Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh.

 Remote broadcasts in other markets are moving to a full internet based VoIP solution, where the remote broadcasters has a unit that speaks IP to the nearest internet connection and negotiates a VoIP “call” to the dedicated hybrid at the studio. I’ve even seen apps for smart phones that allow this style of connectivity using the phone’s hardware to do the VoIP work and the cellular data network for the data. I’m not sure I’d want to try this in a mission critical application!  On the other hand, it’d certainly sound better than a raw cellular call and doesn’t have the hassle of setting up a microwave link.

 In the studio, if SIP is king, Hybrids are available to consume SIP audio just like an IP phone.  I would imagine if you have good SIP trunks these sound delightful!

 There you have it.  Telephony meets Radio.  I think so long as radio is around, you’ll continue to have talk show callers, contest callers, callers who want to know the weather.  Despite the push to the Internet, telephony is still the preferred method for many radio listeners to communicate and have a voice in their station, no pun intended!

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