At first glance, the project seemed impossible. Here we were, in the middle of the desert, 500 miles from the nearest real city, and we needed to install a telecommunications network on campus that would cover an area of ​​approximately 150 square kilometers. The goal was to make campus communications work at the same level as a city-based industrial campus. Memories of military leadership exercises came to mind, where with a limited number of tools you were faced with the expectation that with a little tenacity and creativity under the right conditions, your team could make seashells do HF radio.
We return to basic telecommunications engineering. Your task is to take a budget, an existing or emerging technology, a relatively clear set of goals, and then design a flexible solution that completely meets and exceeds everyone’s expectations. Of course, this must be ahead of schedule and under budget. Simple, right?
So, in the middle of the desert, we incorporated new technologies such as wireless bridges to connect major campus locations, VoIP to take advantage of lower startup and operating costs for internal and external communications, a VSAT link to the central office, and then the gateways. for network connectivity and voice transit/termination. Using a numbering plan provided by the upstream VoIP provider, and voila! You are now an extension of the office PBX located 3,000 miles away in the comfort of your company’s headquarters.
Only landlines on stage are LAN connections inside campus buildings, and that’s only really useful for connecting file servers to the LAN/WLAN or VoIP phones to the LAN. This is for those seniors who are still mentally connected to a desk phone, not for those of us who use a wireless PDA with a softphone or WiFi phone.
Surprise: in 2002 we built a model very similar to this one for a mining company in the middle of the Gobi desert. Details on request.
Transfer to Seoul South Korea. Walking down the street you see many phone booths. The funny thing is that there are no wires connected to the phone booths, and you see a small antenna sticking out of the top of the booth. The explanation is wireless DSL. Cold.
Change to New Orleans, Morris Point (Minnesota) or Long Beach. New developments coming in, old developments being torn down as part of the post-storm rebuild. Everyone needs a high-performance communications infrastructure, whether it’s for basic entertainment or network communications. Let’s look at the existing telecom tool bag for assets. Verizon Broadband Wireless, SBC Broadband, DirecTV, or an entrepreneurial start-up using a Gobi Desert-style wireless campus hub. All could provide equal or better service than services previously riding on top of copper infrastructure, or for areas that are simply “greenfield” sites with no existing cable plant or phone infrastructure. Surprise, they are all available in our recreation area.
You might say “well, you know wireless and cable are low capacity – not suitable for the high-traffic links needed to run a business or entertainment. Hmm… Looking at marketing materials for companies like Gigabeam (www. gigabeam.com) looks like we can now throw up to around 10 Gbps over the air, which is a pretty healthy bridge, probably enough to meet the needs of Morris Point, Minnesota.
OK, the capacity argument is history. Wireless technology can actually provide much higher “line” capacity than existing copper cable plant, and is vastly less expensive. Next argument…
Hmm… starting to run out of arguments to replace existing models of “landline” communications with wireless? Do not feel alone. About the only model of outside cable plant being installed is fiber for phone companies to increase line capacity to homes in an effort to compete with cable TV companies. Verizon’s FIOS will bring not only Internet access to over 50 Mbps in the home, but will also handle entertainment channels very well. A far cry from the old plain old telephone service (POTS). Therefore, Verizon’s intent is not to offer high-performance POTS, but rather to offer high-speed Internet, CATV, and telephony. Also cool.
As a competitive entertainment and telecommunications project, we look forward to more creative and useful ideas coming from all telecommunications companies. Personally, I don’t care if my entertainment comes from Comcast, DirecTV, SBC, Verizon, or Time Warner; I simply want the most advanced entertainment and communications available. I don’t care if it’s by fiber, by copper or by air. I just want 450 TV channels, the Internet that provides me with the content I want without delay, and an effective way to communicate with any phone or presence device anywhere in the world.
However, I live in a very technically advanced part of the United States, have not experienced a catastrophic natural disaster, and am not at the mercy of a single telecommunications provider.
Back to the gulf coast and Morris Point. You must deliver high-performance communications to all accessible homes and businesses in the area. You have to do it fast. You have to do it on a reasonable budget. Do you buy telephone switches, copper and dig streets for conduits and manholes, or plant telephone poles every 100 feet? Or do you take advantage of high-performance wireless technologies that are only restricted by the end user who has power and the potential for line-of-sight to a wireless transmitter?
Let’s not waste time with the E911 problems, they are already solved. Close to 0% of households in the US do not have at least one cell phone, with GPS, that is available at any time if there is an emergency. Regardless of whether the mobile phone uses packets or CDMA, the GPS device still locates it within approximately 1 meter. Also, and particularly with wireless technology, batteries are an inherent part of the end user’s device, or a UPS can easily be installed if E911 services are truly essential to those out in the field. A backhoe, because an accident (hitting a pole), or any of a thousand other variables can work to bring down a POTS line just as easily as a wireless connection.
Let’s not waste time on “commercial call quality” issues. Those are resolved. Sometime check the setup time of your long distance or international call on Skype compared to a paid call. Let’s not waste time on anything other than the provision of telecommunication and entertainment services to end users, wherever they may be.
Recovery time from a natural or man-made disaster is now based on restoring an antenna, splicing a cable that feeds an antenna, and aligning the antennas. Your WiFi Internet connection powering a WiFi laptop or phone needs no cable or line-of-sight alignment, so once the antenna is restored, you’re online. This is calculated in days, rather than months. Remember the post-Katrina stories of young people driving vans to the gulf, installing a portable generator, connecting a wireless bridge to a “friendly” ISP, and then providing email and VoIP access to isolated neighborhoods around the world? If a 19-year-old high school graduate with a portable generator can set up global communications within hours of a natural disaster, shouldn’t we at least consider this model for disaster response, if not a permanent solution?
The big ones don’t like this discussion. It’s hard to give up a monopoly. It’s hard to accept the possibility that in 5 years a phone number will just be a convenience reference as the world turns to presence indicators. It is hard to accept that the automobile replaced horses and carriages, or that the airplane replaced trains and cruise ships for long-distance travel. But it happened, and we’re all better for the change.
As a society, we must prepare for the next quantum shift in technology-enabled communications and entertainment. As a company, we need to keep a close eye on early adopters and be prepared to move forward, whether through R&D or M&A.
To Morris Point and the Gulf Coast? Sure, feel free to lay out fiber on the long-haul side of the network (assuming your fiber isn’t in place yet, that could be an amazing revelation). Let’s forget about this last-mile copper infrastructure nonsense. Let’s aggressively leverage existing and emerging wireless technologies and meet the needs of the community and businesses. Really.