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.
The Last Word.. June 1998
A Switch in Time
Battling rural regs only serves up frustration.
My rural service customers have not yet seen the benefit RUS money is supposed to provide.
Nortel is worried. Seems they have found out that IBM Global Communications has major research and development talent working on the new generation of central office (CO) switches. And they don't call them switches. Three guesses: The answer, if you remember what I mentioned last month, is SERVER.
Before we go any further, there is engineering consensus that says that when you get rid of DC in the local loop, there comes five orders of magnitude reduction in total cost of subscriber plant.
The IBM conclusion from this study is that a big computer called a server is cheaper to install and operate with dry copper pairs to the home than conventional industry telephone design. NO 20cps 90v ringing. NO DC. All 26-gauge dry copper pairs with broadband digital to every subscriber.
The distances are much farther than conventional unloaded (or loaded) analog signals they can go over the same distance with bigger gauge cable.
According to IBM, the tricky part right now is upgrading the network to recognize destination numbers. For example, does the number go on an old analog phone or a modern digital (Internet-type) phone? IBM knows the industry is not ready for that -- yet.
It may be that the FCC will have to enforce a deadline for implementation, and tie that deadline to allowing the regional Bell operating companies entry into long distance. That would surely satisfy those FCC commissioners who say that the Internet is the primary objective for the future.
Others have mentioned that in 1913, when AT&T was forced to sell its interest in Western Union, that the company believed it was invincible. I mean, after all, what better way to deliver a message than to have it hand-0deliverd by a uniformed man on a bicycle:
YO! IBM! Where do I send the purchase order?
CALEA, CONT.
Last month, I mentioned that it appeared the Justice Department had the upper hand on the CALEA battle. Witness the definition of what constitutes a "significant upgrade"; the U.S. Telephone Association (USTA) reports that the Federal Register says it's any upgrade, no matter how small, if it hamper law enforcement. Therefore, if an upgrade does not hamper law enforcement, there is no limit.
THE RURAL UTILITY SERVICE
I first applied for a loan to provide rural telephone service in 1964. I was turned down, because I did not have the "unofficial" 300 subscribers that the agency felt was needed to qualify for a loan. So said Cliff Goetting and Don Lambert, the two field engineers who told me their efforts fell on a stupid agency 'policy' requiring 300 subscribers minimum.
So I started calling the Rural Electrification Administration (REA) the "Urban Telephone Administration". Bob Peters, who worked his way up to his final post as assistant REA administrator, picked up on the phrase.
He told me that the first time he used it, the bureaucrats thought he was kidding. He wasn't.
That shortsighted policy prevented some really rural areas of the West from getting telephones for two generations. However, perseverance doesn't beat cunning all the time. It only took 19 more years before I could demonstrate prospects for 300 customers and my first REA loan, the "A" loan, was approved.
After that loan came through, I brought four new exchanges on line for 20% less than the professionals estimated, because I did a lot of the work myself. This included the 10% higher costs that every REA borrower spend for paperwork to cover the you-know-what's of the REA policy formulators.
Second and third loan applications never got off the ground. Those two were rolled into a fourth, of "D" loan. My Beehive Tel's $5 million loan and 5% interest was approved five years ago. I'd hoped it would provide me with a half dozen, neat, high-tech central office.
Guess what? The Rural Utility Service (RUS) doesn't have (and won't consider) making such neat switches available on its list of approved vendors. The only available switch is from Harris, and Harris refuses to dance with an obsolescent RUS policy relating to small central office switch specifications.
So, my rural service customers have not yet seen the benefit which RUS money is supposed to provide. NO RUS coin for Beehive yet.
In 1949, Congress told REA to make telephone loans to provide for the "adequate service to rural users." Right.
Before he retired, Bob Peters warned me about this.
Copyright 1998 by A. W. Brothers and Americas Network magazine. All rights reserved.
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