General considerations concerning the integration of satellites into a regional ISDN

The Conference Europeenne des Administrations des Posts et Telecommunications (CEPT) is studying the feasibility of expanding the EUTELSAT network to a larger number of Earth stations, connected directly to international switching centres (ISC), using CCITT No.7 signalling system, to form part of the European ISDN. The author reviews the feasibility of this concept and investigates several ways which could be used to achieve this, and highlights certain areas of potential difficulties such as compatibility of satellite and terrestrial circuits for certain ISDN services. He considers satellite and network increased integration, and discusses demand assignment and echo cancellation. Satellite/ISDN service compatibility is overviewed