The big debut, With its latest technology version, the ISDN council hopes for a blockbuster

Making ISDN easy to use is the goal of the National ISDN Council. Each year since 1995, the group has met to identify what's hot for ISDN in the coming year. Recently, the group gathered to talk about additions to the suite of National ISDN 1995, 1996 and 1997 in the form of National ISDN 1998.

Two major items are on the horizon, according to council representatives. They are Auto-Service Profile Identification (Auto-SPID) and the capability to support two simultaneous voice calls on different B channels.

Auto-SPID was supposed to be part of a phased-in approach after first offering generic SPID and support for non-initializing terminals. However, the three major voice switch makers - Lucent Technologies, Northern Telecom and Siemens Stromberg-Carlson - have agreed to add Auto-SPID support by the end of 1997, making an interim step seemingly unnecessary.

Auto-SPID means less work for equipment manufacturers because the terminal initialization could be automatically downloaded from the network instead of manually at the customer premises, according to Garret Jenkins, chairman of NIC and a BellSouth ISDN manager.

Lucent has already added the capability, Siemens will add it by fourth quarter and, with the recent NIC meeting, Nortel has also committed to adding Auto-SPID.

The council is taking comments from users to report any possible applications that could be supported better than Auto-SPID by non-initializing terminals. However, NIC members haven't been able to come up with any solutions yet, Jenkins said. Comments are being accepted through the end of June.

The second important new capability will be the addition of the two voice B channels simultaneously running with the packet D channel. That means a user could make a voice call, receive a fax and get data all at the same time. Again, the key was getting all three major switch vendors to agree to add the simultaneous B channel capability to their platforms, but they have.

"We've really been concentrating on simplifying ordering and provisioning for customers," Jenkins said. "We know maybe the ball has been dropped in the past on ISDN.

Mike Smith, analyst with Probe Research, said he has seen the positive results of recent improvements first hand, but he questioned the timing.

"Unfortunately, a lot of the work being done by the National ISDN Council and a number of other ISDN groups is probably about five years too late," he said. "More and more users are going to come to the conclusion that 128 kb/s is not enough.

Smith believes users will regard ISDN as a low-end option and that ISDN will continue to grow at a steady pace.

Jenkins disagreed, saying he believes ISDN will continue to grow and evolve along with higher speed data services currently being touted like asymmetrical digital subscriber line and cable modems.