This discussion is Beehive CEO's - monthly column as found on the last page of Americas Network magazine. They have been printing his letters for nearly 20 years. This column will remain posted till he writes the next one. It starts with notes about the 1997 annual telephone convention in New Orleans attended by over 25,000 industry people. The Last Word..                                      July 1997 SUPERCOM 97 Supercom: Booked reservations through the Hotel Network (800-96HOTEL) to stay at the Comfort Inn near the Superdome. The advertized continental breakfast was a classic bait and switch. To get a "muffin and drink" required plus 30 minutes sitting in the coffee shop. One employee. Most attendees just wrote it off. Wait for he bus. Eat elsewhere. We three thought the mandatory charge of a buck a day for the room safe was a nice touch, along with a buck per page to receive a fax! However, local calls were free. New Orleans weather was shirtsleeve excellent. I took a jacket to wear in the cold convention center and on the equally cold Delta flight to/from anywhere. Construction on the building expansion which will double convention floor space is proceeding. Hotels to house attendees is not. The convention center is not going to have a moving sidewalk. So I want the electric cart franchise. Make a mint for the poor souls trying to cover a 1600 exhibitor show. Two point five days was not enough time. I think we visited maybe half of the 800 excellent booths. So guys - advertize in these pages cause there was stuff my people didn't get a chance to inspect and chat about. Mail and catalogs which should issue forth from all those machines that got the address by swiping my registration card is not yet arriving. I do await quotes on crush proof duct that the maker will insert my fiber inside and then ship it to me on reels! That's going to save many dollars as we plow down from Kolob mesa this year. Without the crush proof duct, the fiber will be killed by the rock we have to plow through coming off the mountain. MICROSOFT Microsoft had a good sized booth but nobody I could find had details about their push to use "NT" to connect SS7 via packet relay, or frame relay (read that as INTERNET). That announcement got my attention! It is a wonderful idea to save our industry tons of transport money for fixed data links that really should be on frame relay or internet. That would allow SS7 to be in every switch in the network (at orders of magnitude dollar savings). I was on the verge of adopting linux (unix) for our internet platform server. That is now on hold till further data is acquired on this SS7 concept. If microsoft and a hardware company would send a sharp tech type around to all we small telcos, I think they would go back home with a fat order book. The big guys aren't going to do it till they can write off the existing investment and the concept of "if its not broke...." However, the system is broke already. The FCC mandate to adopt number portability is being locked up by Lockheed and Perot Systems. As I understand the design, it's a really large, huge, really big, mammoth SMS800 type kludge. It will insure higher costs for suscribers for generations to come. We've simply got to stop and regroup. Our programmers just have to be creative using NT or something similar and write new software using packet relay to interface with existing switches and CPU's. Remember .. Microsoft is not going to do the hardware - they make their dough on selling lots of software. They have chosen NT as the SS7 vehicle. It's up to us and the vendors to put it into operation. If Bill Gates can stop his giant ship (nine billion in cash), and turn it in another direction in 30 days .. the really big telcos who want to use a system like the SMS800 data base (with its million per month net profit for each of the seven Bells) can do it too. Number portability needs the internet even if it is our internet! Hello FCC? Hello out there? Is this even a voice in the wilderness? My Beehive telco needs to replace a bunch of small digital switches. I'd like them all to have SS7. It looks like microsoft might enable that, but RUS is not prepared to finance such a revolutionary concept. Bob Peters has until the end of this year before he retires as deputy director of RUS. He could (maybe) get RUS to mandate vendors to adopt Number portability and SS7 using internet functional system design. Switches that can do are not RUS approved. Those that are approved - can't. And, it’s up to all of us to tell the hard wire number portability folks to stop cold. Get the FCC to accept a small delay (like tell the industry it can't earn any profit off the costs for number portability). We could then march into the next Century with a foundation of lower costs by use of the internet. Copyright 1997 by A. W. Brothers and Americas Network magazine. All rights reserved.   © 1997, 1998, 1999 Beehive Telephone Co.