It's not unique in the world of ISDN
A cellular comms rental company I worked for (as an NT/Exchange engineer) decided they wanted to open an office in the middle of the continental USA.
However, the date for go-live of the site didn't match with the date estimated by Sprint for the connectivity to be successfully installed into the site. But the site in the US had a few ISDN lines in, and the site in the UK also had some ISDN lines in.
My boss then went out and bought a pair of Cisco 2500 routers with ISDN cards in and suggested I configure them. Bearing in mind, at this time, I hadn't actually touched a Cisco device before in my life. (for my sins I'm now a Cisco CCSP).
Cue boss standing over my desk whilst I stuggle to configure the devices, although the early days of internet allowed me to at least search the cisco website and understand what I was doing.
Boss - 'Make sure it drops the calls when there's no traffic'.
Hmm. Can't find that IOS command anywhere, can't find any settings in the config.
Me - 'Can I please go on a basic Cisco course because I'm struggling a bit here'
Boss - 'No - no time and no budget'.
Me - 'I'm worried that this will be expensive as the ISDN calls between the UK and the USA and vice-versa will be huge'
Boss - 'Can't do much about that with the timescales'
Ok then...
So I configure the router the best I can, set up a dial up modem at each side so I can get into the routers remotely. The router lands in the office in the USA and I'm flown out to set it all up (at a cost probably close to the cisco training course including hotels). Never set up a large network before, but I get to work setting up the LAN and setting up the router. Remember - I'm a Microsoft server engineer never having touched network kit before.
Anyway - by luck or judgement, it all works swimmingly, office is open on time, happy faces all round, and I get to visit the museum where John F Kennedy got shot during my downtime before my flight home. Nice one.
Then the Sprint circuit gets delivered, we switch over to their managed routers, and disconnect the ISDN router. Yay.
Till around 3 months later when my boss drags me into the office with the CEO and pushes a phone bill in front of me and asks what I know about a £50k phone bill for one month.The router looked like it was dialling up every few minutes, which is what you'd expect to be honest.
I said that will probably be the sum total of your ISDN calls from the continental USA to the UK. They threatened me with the sack, but I argued that I was only doing what I was asked, that if they'd trained me I may have had more clue, but in the position I was put in, I was working with limited resource.
I ended up keeping my job, but it did teach me to make damn sure that everyone up the chain knew if they were making a decision that could have been financially disasterous for the company. And I got to go on lots of training courses for Cisco and Checkpoint :)