Introduction To Telecom – Voice and Data

April 20/21, 2009

There are new technological offerings available that can save your company huge expenditures in telecommunications, data communications, networking and staffing.

Examples:

Why spend money on building/growing a network or outsourcing when cloud computing is available, less expensive and secure, Why spend money on installing new or more infrastructure wiring when a wireless protocol can be used for all of your communications - at high speed (802.11n).

Traditional Options:

You can rely on various vendors to keep you current, but they have a vested interest in their technological niches. You could bring in consultants (I am one) but you might not be able to guide them through your enterprises wants, needs and desires.

A Better Direction:

Attending the course “Introduction to Telecom – Voice and Data” gives you and your personnel an understanding of all the existing technologies that are in use, with the positives and negatives of each technology. All this is done using the simplest of terms and without a need for an engineering degree. The course is updated monthly, as new offerings are available. This allows you to lead the discussions with vendors and consultants in the direction that would create the most cost effective and efficient communication networks for your company.

I have given this course monthly for BCR to thousands of attendees over the last fifteen years. Now that BCR has left the training business, several of their top trainers have organized Telecom+UC Training to continue to conduct the same highly received courses on-site and public. The first public course will be offered on April 20 and 21 at the Holiday Inn, Mart Plaza in Chicago IL. How often the public courses will be offered is still in the works, so don’t miss out.

Contact: Zak Cohen at zcohen@briarwoodassociates.com or access our web site at telecomuctraining.com for sign up information.

The latter part of 1879 and the early part of 1880 saw the first use of telephone numbers at Lowell, Massachusetts. During an epidemic of measles, Dr. Moses Greeley Parker worried that Lowell’s four operators might succumb and bring about a paralysis of telephone service. He recommended the use of numbers for calling Lowell’s more than 200 subscribers so that substitute operators might be used in the event of an emergency. The telephone management at Lowell feared that the public would take the assignment of numbers as an indignity but the telephone users saw the practical value of the change immediately and it went into effect with no problems. (The implementation of dial telephone systems would occur later.)

No. 1 ESS was designed with two types of memory. The PROGRAM STORE used permanent magnet twister memory and the CALL STORE used magnetic cores. The twister memory used tiny rectangular magnetic spots of vicalloy (magnetic alloy) which had a twister wire (a wire with twisted on tape) attached to each spot. The wire reads the magnetic “signal” to sense a one or zero. The call store used tiny ferrite core “doughnuts” with an x-axis wire and a Y axis wire threaded through. Direction of current flow would change the charge on the core to store a one or zero.

The downturn in the economy and the endless stages of layoffs, mergers and buyouts give us an opportunity to shift focus and direction. Obviously, old business models must change and old communications models most be modified. Here are some ideas:

Audit and Redesign
Technical and staff personnel must be monitoring and documenting usage and traffic patterns for their networks. Management, along with technical personnel, should be actively considering network alternatives which can save on expenses. I have seen large savings come out of redesigns which have not only saved the cost of the redesign but hundreds of thousands of dollars of monthly communications expenses. Example – Several point to point circuits are wired from one central hub to each outlying node. These can be replaced by a single big “pipe” (using economies of scale) feeding each node with a drop and insert breakout. Using negotiated Service Level Agreements, outage time would be controlled so as not to affect the business operation.

Service Monitoring
There is a cost to the purchase of CSUs and other alarm monitoring devices. There are additional costs to install MODEMS and lines that monitor the devices, but how much is the cost of extended downtime caused by various vendors pointing fingers at each other during trouble location? Many technical operations for trouble isolation, such as loop-backs and restarts, can be done remotely using the MODEM and CSUs. This will save time and money on dispatches, extended down time and arguments.

Training
For some reason I keep harping on training, but well trained personnel and supervisors (as well as trained, strategically placed managers) can save on outage times (see above), bad engineering designs, incompatible technical purchases and effectively prepare the network for company growth needs.

Here’s one final thought, and I know that many technical gurus will disagree with me but here goes… It may not be the time to upgrade to new technology – The older “stuff”, such as packetized voice and data over T1, T3 and SONET equipment is still effective. Associated equipment is becoming more available on the used market. Vendors and providers will give huge discounts and “a pipe is a pipe”, even if it is not bleeding edge technology.

If you have any questions or disagree, leave a comment, I’d love to start a discussion about these notes.

There is a substantial technical, economic and legal rationale that necessitates a working knowledge of all data and telecommunications issues. Up-to-date information can be found in various technical magazines, technical papers and web sites. Recently, many new regulations and laws have been issued to control business processes and accountability.

The following five reasons demonstrate and substantiate the need to know and follow the latest technical issues:

1. To comply with the growing number of acts and regulations

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act was passed by congress to help restore confidence in the corporate world after the Enron scandal. This act contains many requirements which impact the IT world, and willful disregard of this act can result in civil and criminal penalties against all “C” level executives including the CIO and CTO. Likewise, In the financial world, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act requires the collection and storage of e-mail messages and data bases, as does the HIPAA Act in the health field.

ISO 17799/BS-7799 is the international IT security guideline and standard that requires audits to determine compliance. The Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) designates who can read electronically transmitted data and E-mail and what type of communications need court orders to gather and read. This is of vital importance to employers and data carriers. All these acts require knowledge of the proper standards for the operation and design of the network and the application software to be able to successfully monitor and store applicable information.

2. To insure interconnectivity

New standards are constantly being issued as changes in technology are taking place. Some of the standards are so specific that many vendors engineer their equipment to fill a small niche in the industry. Knowledge of the standards gives an ability to know if a specific product, feature or technology would fit into a network. An example is that of the cellular world with AT&T, Sprint/Nextel and Verizon each having their own cell sites and lack of interconnectivity.

3. To maintain a lead in development of products

In some new specific area of communications, Voice over IP (VoIP) which requires interconnectivity to operate, an up-to-date working knowledge of the changing standards is a necessity. Development of new IP-PBXs and IP phones require that they interconnect with the various IP networks. New standards in SIP and IMS must be followed to insure that new products can be viable in both the network and the marketplace

4. To ensure credibility in the industry

This is my hot button. If we are not current with the standards and the nomenclature of the industry we lose credibility with the technical community, our peers and our customers. Every time someone uses the term RS-232 instead of EIA-232, most of the knowledgeable technical personnel shudder and glaze over. Any one who wishes to claim knowledge of the standards should know that EIA Recommended Standard (RS) - 232c was superseded in 1986 by EIA-232d, and by TIA/EIA-232e and eventually by TIA/EIA-232f. Most of the leading technology companies, such as Cisco, have maintained the correct standard terminology. If you use the old term you, and your company, may lose credibility - and why take that chance? There are many other terms which reflect an up-to-date knowledge and expertise, these will appear in later articles.

5. To grow our knowledge of technology

Keeping up with the technology is important, not only to keep credibility in the industry, but, with the growing competition, to save our jobs. It has become palatable for companies to move IT resources offshore, or to a outsourced lower-cost firm, and this puts you and your staff at risk of being redundant. To avoid this, an organization must be convinced that the staff is valuable and competent (which is based in an in-depth working knowledge of the field). In light of recent industry-wide belt tightening, it is even more necessary to prove the importance of your knowledge and your unique insight, therefore keeping yourself and your staff as essential parts of the organization.

As you can see, we must keep up with all the latest information. If you’d like to learn more about keeping your IT staff up to date with issues that affect your industry, contact us and let us know how we can keep your staff in the know.

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