[mike_hearn]

No, he's right. I have a friend who does voiceover work and is and announcer for the UK Channel 4. He does all his work from home using an ISDN link. It's a huge pita for him because the telcos don't want to know indeed, but it's the usual story with legacy workflows.

I think it's also a fully switched system so you are guaranteed bandwidth with no packet drops or buffering which is clearly useful for broadcast work.

[anthk]

And by IP over media, it's literal:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOCSIS

https://defcon.org/images/defcon-16/dc16-presentations/defco...

[traceroute66]

> No, he's right. I have a friend who does voiceover work and is and announcer for the UK Channel 4. He does all his work from home using an ISDN link.

But how much is this to do with either Channel 4 not supporting (in the "assistance" sense of the word, rather than "interop") his move to IP or potentially his personal reluctance to change ("ain't broke don't fix it" mindset).

Given he is in the UK and the incumbent telco (BT) are switching off ISDN in 2027, I really suspect there is more than meets the eye to your friend's story.

I am not seeking to judge, I just feel realistically that it highly unlikely that at this late stage (1 year to go to 2027) there really is no other option other than ISDN when collaborating with Channel 4...

The reason I say this is because even the briefest of internet search throws up hard publicly-available evidence that the broadcast world have indeed moved on in the world ....

Way back in 2008 the BBC were already investigating options to move away from ISDN...[1]

... and evidence is out there the BBC are using SIP for critical things like remote Radio contributions[2]

> guaranteed bandwidth with no packet drops or buffering

You can absolutely get this on IP.

[1] https://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/whp/whp-pdf-files/WHP170... [2] https://support.inquality.com/kb/faq.php?id=144

[mike_hearn]

I assume they have a migration plan or already migrated. I don't know, he told me this years ago. It wasn't his choice it is/was just the standard in the industry. I'm sure they're moving to IP at the moment, I was just pushing back on the idea that broadcast doesn't use it. If they've moved away from it, it's a relatively recent change (last five years or so).

[traceroute66]

> If they've moved away from it, it's a relatively recent change (last five years or so).

So the TL;DR is we are not disagreeing then ? ;)

I never expressed any doubt that traditionally ISDN absolutely was the lifeblood of broadcast, there is zero doubt about that.

What I am saying is that was then and now is now. We are now sitting here in 2026 and the world of comms has moved on dramatically and the broadcast world has moved along with it and that those people still clinging on to legacy ISDN will be forced to shift to IP-based technologies because they will be forcibly disconnected by their telcos very soon (1–5 years).

The reality is also that here in 2026 we live in a world where (a) you have a 4k tv and high-end audio system in your home ... so there is a natural limitation on what utility ISDN has in this world, and (b) the general public is increasingly consuming the media produced by the broacaster via IP means (streams over 5G-IP to mobile, streams over IP to Apple TV boxes) ... so if a broadcaster can escape the un-necessary complexity (and cost) of transcoding ISDN-received content to IP and shift to an IP-to-IP environment, why would they not want to do that ?