Framed or also known as structured E1, means that it has the protocol needed to distinguish each time slot in a frame.
A 2048 kbps E1 frame has 24 Time slots. TS 0 usually is used for signaling and the remaining TS will each contain a 64 kpbs voice channel. This is needed when older style telecom transmission is used and you need to have the TS separated. See ITU-T G.704 for reference.
Sampling with 8bits at 8kHz was the normal ETSI telephony digital sampling standard before (and still are at many places yet), giving the 64kbps channels. So a E1 actually could carry 23 simultaneous Telephony connections.
Unframed means that there are no structure with TS, only a bitstream of 2048 kbps. It will not be possible to divide this stream into Time slots.
What do you mean with 8 users?
Aren’t there at least 31 TS to be used simultaneously by one user per TS?
Half rate would mean x2?
Or will there be a need for signaling which takes all other TS?