A good pilot has a solid appreciation of how the plane flies through the air. These skills make the difference in emergency situations. There was an airplane accident last year where a commuter plane ... (read more)
A few years ago I worked for an equipment company. We made some great products that were efficient and very reliable. We enjoyed some success but we were always less than what we should have been. ... (read more)
I had a nice office visit from a 5 year old boy the other day. I had to entertain him for a few minutes so I showed him a product demonstration we had developed. Within 15 minutes this young boy le... (read more)
Heard it Through the Grapevine
There has been lots of buzz about the new TV show called Undercover Boss. I confess that I have not seen it yet but hats off to the bosses with the confidence and courage to participate. Is there a... (read more)
Can things move any faster than they seem to be going today? How are we ever going to keep up with this? Technology changes at an ever accelerating pace while those who need to understand the techn... (read more)
With all of the latest flap about China's insistence to hack into Google email accounts for dissidents maybe it's time for the world to rise up demonstrate the value of unfettered access to the Int... (read more)
It's time to make the Doughnuts.
Last month, on December 3rd, the White House held a Jobs Summit. This summit brought together many industry leaders and economists, from sectors of the economy ranging from government, education, a... (read more)
Are you ready for this competition?
I'd like to tell you about a friend of mine. He is a Chinese citizen of Beijing. I met him a few years ago in Massachusetts. He came to the US to study for his PhD in Computer science. He received ... (read more)
The story of Santa Claus dates back to the third century with the life of Nicholas. Nicholas was born to wealthy parents who instilled on him a sense of purpose to use his wealth to relieve the suf... (read more)
It's no secret that some companies in our industry think that product training is all that's required for their techs and engineers. These companies are in for a rude awakening. The next generation... (read more)
Everyone likes a good fight, and it's even better if you know you're going to win. We like our professional sports fair. We get upset when athletes take performance-enhancing drugs. But in real-li... (read more)
Watershed Networks Endorses OPASTCO's New Vision
I've just returned from OPASTCOs Technical and Marketing Symposium in Minneapolis. There were two tracks which examined peering in an IP world and marketing IP services. Both tracks were well rec... (read more)
Life, Liberty and ... Broadband?
The Finnish Ministry of Transport and Communications in Helsinki passed a law today that requires telecommunications companies to provide high-speed access to all of Finland's population. The Min... (read more)
About a thousand years ago, Cnut (Canute) the Great cut an imposing figure as one of the most powerful people on earth. As King of England, Denmark, Norway and Sweden, his followers were legion. Ev... (read more)
The story out of T-Mobile last week is that Microsoft subsidiary, Danger, had a server failure. Their servers contained all of the user data for T-Mobile's popular Sidekick wireless phones. All ... (read more)
I was thinking about a client company the other day and our discussion about their intent to compete and not only sustain their company but to grow the business as well.
So, we examined what s... (read more)
The hardest question to handle in an interview is the one you don't have an answer for. You can be honest about it and say, "well I've never worked on a flux capacitor before, but I'm sure I coul... (read more)
The Right Place at the Right Time
Sometimes you make a lucky shot. Sometimes you hit the bulls-eye. But most of the time, there's more than luck involved.
A well-to-do friend of mine, involved with several very successful st... (read more)
Promote Collaboration and Teamwork
Picture this: You're at the ballpark before the game as everyone is led in singing "The Star-Spangled Banner". It's a difficult song, with a range of well over an octave and a lot of words that man... (read more)
There are three very interesting and telling events taking place which are harbingers of things to come. The first is the announcement of a personnel change at British Telecom. Matt Bross, the CTO ... (read more)
The other day we were having a discussion about where this is all going. It was so much easier in the telecom days; we provided the best wireline telephone service with the most features and callin... (read more)
The latest news is that Sprint is outsourcing their network operations to Ericsson. We could see this coming as we have relayed to anyone who would listen. In the next several years we anticipate m... (read more)
A couple of weeks ago there was a story about the need to educate the telecom work force to prepare for the next generation network. One of the comments to this article questioned why a company sho... (read more)
My iPhone broke the other day. After working well for nine months, it started making calls on its own, sometimes at awkward and inconvenient hours! In a month our wireless bill had more than doubl... (read more)
Do you Twitter?
How many times have you heard that question lately? I'll bet you remember the days before social media when the closest thing to Twitter was sitting at the counter of your local d... (read more)
Ever wonder why the school systems have computers in the classroom for young children? Is it that our teachers need the help of something to distract kids in a larger class size?
If you look clos... (read more)
Stimulus Promises Warmer Weather, and More Sun!
Life imitates nature in many ways. Here in the Northeast winter brings harsh weather and freezing air. Some plants go dormant through the long, cold months. Others die off, leaving seeds that will ... (read more)
Years ago I ran the telecom network at MIT. After I had been there for a couple of weeks, this person called me to ask if I was the new guy from Bellcore. He wanted to get together to ask me a few ... (read more)
Convergence, is it about technology or ideas? There is lots of information out there describing convergence in terms of circuit switched vs packet, wireline vs wireless, all optical vs optical/elec... (read more)
Back in the 50's, Desi Arnaz wanted to film 'I Love Lucy' while they were broadcasting the show. Executives at CBS thought the expense unnecessary and ceded the rights to the films to Arnaz, who pa... (read more)
Beavers build their lodges on the banks of lakes and ponds out of sticks, twigs and brush and access the lodge from under the water. In the northern climates, ponds and lakes freeze over during win... (read more)
Happy Holidays from Watershed Networks!
Every month we send out our newsletter and offer our thoughts and opinions on the importance of training and education in the daily life of the Telecom Industry. In the past our tool box included a... (read more)
The Chinese proverb says "May you live in interesting times". Well that certainly holds true for the current state of affairs we all find ourselves in. We have two wars, an economic meltdown, a pre... (read more)
If You Want to Stay the Same... You Have to Change?
In this election year the message is change. Everyone's talking about change, and they're right. We can't keep doing things the same old way and expect different results. We know we need to think o... (read more)
One of the most popular tourist destinations in Italy is the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Construction of the Bell Tower in Pisa began in 1173. Soon after construction began the tower started leaning due... (read more)
Have you ever dreamed of competing in the Olympics? It's fun to watch the events on TV, but imagine living the athlete's life, facing the competition and knowing that the next minute, the next 100 ... (read more)
Celebrating the Freedom to Learn
July 4th is the day we celebrate our independence. These days we often take our personal liberties for granted. We've also gotten used to being 'always connected', whether by landline, mobile phone... (read more)
The Significance of Understanding
In our lives, it's always easy to learn actions to realize a favorable outcome. In our daily work as we gain experience we know that given a certain situation a resolution to the problem is as simp... (read more)
Save Some Money By Going Green
Global warming, climate change, melting polar ice caps, ozone layers, green houses gases, carbon footprints and $4.50/gallon gas; Everybody talks about it now. Taking care of the environment isn't ... (read more)
Are you paying Rock Star rates to learn about your network?
Ever pay $200 a ticket to see a band like U2? I know it's expensive but a once in a lifetime concert is well worth it. That's actually about $70/hour.
Think about your training costs. You know yo... (read more)
Free Training and Other Fairy Tales
I was talking to a telecom operator about their training procedures for new technologies. They told me: "We get free training from our vendors." Is that true? You give free training to your custome... (read more)
Spring training is finally over and it's baseball season again. How do you feel about the team this year? It's funny how we look at baseball players; we act like it's their job to win every game, a... (read more)
Progress in the telecom industry is slow. In the Past, competition usually occurred one at a time and we had time to respond. Of course those were the days.
The internet revolution changed everyt... (read more)
Do you get it or are you going with the flow?
I was talking to a person in a large telecom company yesterday about their plans to migrate their network to support IP services. I asked a couple questions about the technical nature of their stra... (read more)
I was listening to a debate the other day and they were talking about taxes. I had been reading some information about NAFTA and it occurred to me that the two things were connected. The proposal t... (read more)
Aloha from the ATA Winter Convention in Hawaii
Alaskans are hearty people. They are accustomed to the harshest extremes of weather and it was a steady 20 degrees below zero in Anchorage the week of the Alaska Telephone Association's Winter Conv... (read more)
Vonage and IP Telecom Providers
I had a discussion the other day about the affects of Vonage on the business model of telecom service providers. Some companies are losing upwards of 80,000 lines per month to IP Telecom service pr... (read more)
NTCA and OPASTCO - Game on in Phoenix!
Game on in Phoenix!
Everything is happening in Phoenix! The days were nice, the nights were cool but the subject was hot. There's that football game coming up, but the real excitement was at NTCA... (read more)
Greetings From Snowy New England!
The month of January owes its name to the Roman deity Janus, god of doors and gates, of beginnings and endings. Popular depictions usually show Janus with one face looking toward the future and one... (read more)
With the new year upon us, it's the time for us to look at what we have to do in the coming year and get it done with the projected resources.
Think about how things were done in the past. Can ... (read more)
It has always been about people...Now it's really about people
I've always been amazed at the lengths technology companies have gone to in order to build systems to support their products. Years ago, I started my career in telecom switching by reading circuit ... (read more)
There is a difference between learning something and understanding something. When we learn something we comprehend the relationship between one fact and the other or one action which corresponds t... (read more)
Switching and Routing Spending is Up
According to industry analysts, switching and routing spending is up and should continue to exhibit strong growth for the next several years. Of course, much of this has to do with telecom migratin... (read more)
The telecom companies are migrating their networks from the traditional legacy TDM system to the IP network. So why are they doing this? Is this something they want to do? Is this good for them?
... (read more)
Be careful what you hope for because it may come true and ruin your business
The telecom companies are migrating their networks from the traditional legacy TDM system to the IP network. So why are they doing this? Is this something they want to do? Is this good for them?
... (read more)
