John Stankey, President and CEO, AT&T: "Data consumption right now is growing 40% a year."

With growth rates less than half of the predictions, a data-driven FCC and Congress has no reason to rush to bad policy. Wireless technology is rapidly moving to sharing spectrum, whether in-building small cells, WiFi, White Spaces, Shared RAN or tools of what the engineers are calling hetnets — heterogenous networks. The last thing policymakers should do is tie up more spectrum for exclusive use; shared spectrum often yields three to ten times as much capacity.

Bad compromises on the video spectrum are unnecessary because plenty of spectrum is unused. That includes the 20 MHz that M2Z would be building out today if Julius hadn't blocked them; the 20 MHz the cable companies are sitting on and want to sell to Verizon; and the 30 MHz or so Stankey identifies as fallow at AT&T.

40% growth is still substantial, but wireless technology is improving at a breathtaking pace. LTE has about 10x the capacity of 2.5G and 4x the capacity of 3G. LTE Advanced, deploying beginning 2013 at Verizon, is designed for 10x the capacity of LTE. Putting more spectrum to use would be great, but let's do it right.

Wireless speeds are actually going up dramatically, with AT&T delivering 2-5 megabits to most of the country and Verizon's LTE delivering 5-12 megabits to 2/3rds of the population. Verizon is ahead of schedule to bring 5 megabits+ to 92% of the country in 2013 and 96-98% in 2015-2016. AT&T and Sprint have raised capex to catch up. 80%+ of the U.S. will have a 5 megabit offering in 2013-2014, 90%+ by 2015 or sooner. That's without any additional spectrum.

Today's wireless networks are designed to be shared: towers, WiFi, White Spaces, DAS and small cells all working together. The best engineers in the world are working on RAN sharing, SON, hetnets, 8x8 MIMO and techniques I'm writing about in my next book, Gigabit Wireless. AT&T in fact is one of the world leaders in DAS, WiFi and femtos and behind the scenes a key thought leader. There's wonderfully exciting stuff I'll be doing my best to translate for non-engineers.

Takeaway: The future is sharing the airwaves so let's get the policy right.

Written by Dave Burstein, Editor, DSL Prime

They tried and failed with UBB. Now they are at it again with "speed boost" technologies. The two technologies at question are Verizon's "Turbo” service and Roger's "SpeedBoost”. There are very few technical details, but it appears in the former case that users will be able to purchase additional instantaneous bandwidth to the detriment of other users on the same shared service. Whether this will make a difference to actual throughput is another matter because the slow video may be due to server problems and not network congestion. And if you are in elevator with very poor connectivity, you will unlikely get any faster download speed, no matter how many times you press the turbo button. But will Verizon give you a credit if you don't get the advertised speed boost? I doubt it. Similarly the Rogers' service, while still free, seems to imply faster speeds if they detect you are streaming a video, particularly from their own on-line service. Will users who are not streaming video, but using other real time applications get the same benefit such as VoIP or Telepresence? I doubt it.

The carriers continue to have this brain dead idea that bandwidth is a scarce resource — which is only true to the extent that were the ones who created this artificial scarcity. Building a business case around an artificial scarcity is as stupid as trying to make a premium market from air we breathe. Customers aren't interested in buying bandwidth or quality of service to enhance their user experience. Just as with electricity they want and expect that just about any appliance or application will simply work — with no need for special speed boosts and other gimmicks. Imagine negotiating with the electric utility for a little extra power when you needed to turn on your stove or TV.

It is last mile packet loss which has the biggest impact on the customer's user experience — NOT bandwidth or congestion. The Internet (TCP/IP) is designed so that packet loss is used as a signaling tool to reduce packet throughput. Regardless of where the packet loss occurs the Internet is designed to slow down any data stream, that is affected by a lost packet. However the rate to which a data stream is slowed down is greatly dependent on distance. This is why moving caching boxes as close as possible to the user affects end-to- end throughput, particularly if there is ongoing packet loss.

Although bandwidth and congestion can be a factors affecting packet loss, there are much more clever ways of reducing the impact of packet loss, especially in wireless environments. There are two much simpler solutions. The first is to locate caching/cloud servers as close as possible to the end users. Something that companies like Akamai and Google do already — at no charge to the carrier. Decreasing wireless distance from the wireless node is the other critical factor. This is why integrating WiFi with 3G/4G is so important.

A good example of a carrier that "gets it" is Free.FR in France. Free.FR is redefining what the idea of a carrier in the 21st century is, thanks to these innovations I have been talking about and pioneered by R&E networks like SURFnet. Integrating a blend of Wi-Fi, 3G and its all-fiber backbone, Free will offer unlimited voice, texting and data over the mobile networks. Free.fr deploys their own set-top box for automatically sharing a portion of one's broadband connection via Wi-Fi with other Free.fr customers. Over five million set-top boxes means Free.fr has a free Wi-Fi cloud covering major cities such as Paris. Even when away from home, you can easily get broadband instead of resorting to an expensive 3G network. Their set top box will also allow extreme local caching, to further enhance the user mobile experience. This is the future of broadband. Not silly gimmicks like TurboBoost or SpeedBoost.

Written by Bill St. Arnaud , Green IT Networking Consultant

Could it be true that Nokia, RIM and Apple opened up to Government interception?

It is no longer directives only to ISPs and Telecom companies. The lawful or not-yet-lawful pressure to open up for "lawful intercept" is now extended to Phone Hardware Manufactures, Computer Hardware Manufactures, possibly even Chip Manufacturers and other component Manufacturers. Perhaps even hard disk manufacturers. Governments in some or many countries are probably exploring or implementing methods to build in secret doors to own capabilities to intercept communication of any kind.

I am concerned, not because Government of India is alleged to have intercepted US China Economic and Security Review Commission as ALLEGED and MAGNIFIED in this article (You spy on us, we spy on you, is a game that Governments play all the time)

What concerns me is the fact that there is an allegation of phone and computer hardware companies in addition to telecoms and ISPs forced to compromise on the integrity of their products and services "in exchange for market presence" in one or two billion-population geographic regions, quite possibly also in billion dollar geo-regions. This is happening, as reported, now for inter-governmental intercepts, but it would soon lead to wider compromises resulting in the intrusion of user's private space. (Or, is it already happening?) Governments (not only India as magnified in the Computer World article) pressure companies, even ones that are global and very large and make them open secret doors for surveillance of computers, phones, and all communication.

There are clear signs of this happening in a phone or computer you 'own' or on the cloud which hovers all above you.

I have always suspected that this has been happening from the time a Global Software Company in the US was harassed on anti-trust charges ten years ago. Even that probably had some thing to do with untold pressures on the company to open back doors in their operating system. (Perhaps. I don't know. Don't know at all. All that I am saying is entirely based on what occurs in my mind. I have not read or heard anything that supports this theory.)

Is the pressure on companies such as Nokia so overwhelming? (If what is said in the article is true)

Written by Sivasubramanian M, CEO, Turiya and President, Internet Society India Chennai

The world's congested mobile airwaves are being divided in a lopsided manner, with 1 percent of consumers generating half of all traffic. The top 10 percent of users, meanwhile, are consuming 90 percent of wireless bandwidth.

The Times article had another tidbit in it:

Arieso researchers, in their latest survey, found that users of Apple's iPhone 4S downloaded 276 percent more data from an operator's network than did people with the Apple 3G, which has been on the market since June 2008.

Arieso said that part of the reason for the increase in download volumes may be Apple's Siri voice feature on the iPhone 4S which allows consumers to dictate to the phone and enter more text and data into the network in an easier way.

Other news outlets picked up the story and lost all perspective. The Globe carried a Reuters story titled "iPhone 4S devours data twice as fast as previous model". Let's overlook the mathematical incorrectness of the headline ("twice as fast" would have meant only 100% more data, not the 276% — or nearly 4 times as much). The Financial Post carried a Bloomberg story proclaiming in its headline "Siri doubles iPhone data usage".

The Globe/Reuters story more accurately hints at user consumption patterns, rather than the device itself, but it doesn't do much more than recite raw data:

IPhone 4S users transfer on average three times more data than users of the older iPhone 3G model which was used as the benchmark in a study by telecom network technology firm Arieso.

Data usage of the previous model, the iPhone 4, was only 1.6 times higher than the iPhone 3G, while iPad 2 tablets consumed 2.5 times more data than the iPhone 3G, the study showed.

It is possible — and more likely — that the data is demonstrating important market information: that the heaviest users of mobile data are the ones most likely to own the latest devices. It isn't the device that is "devouring" data; it is power users that own the devices. These are the early adopters — the people who line-up to buy the latest device on launch day.

That was what I found most interesting, with important implications for consumer marketing and network development strategists.

Written by Mark Goldberg, Telecommunications Consultant

2011 has been a significant year for the technology sector globally. Information technology is touching more people in more ways than ever before.

Developed markets will be considering a 2012 in which business innovation, competitiveness, and service differentiation are built on ubiquitous broadband, cloud computing, smarter mobile computing, and an increasing plethora of Internet-connected devices. By contrast, securing the technology future for developing markets demands that attention be placed on more fundamental issues.

Here are five key tech issues for the emerging markets in 2012.

Internet Infrastructure

The build-out of critical Internet infrastructure is critical to economic diversification and sustainable development. Initiatives to improve routing of domestic Internet traffic and provide new, more optimal routes for regional Internet traffic must be accelerated through the build-out of Internet exchange points (IXPs). One top of the exchange points must come expanded terrestrial and mobile broadband networks.

Implications: Internet service providers (ISPs), governments, and businesses must work together for a faster roll-out of national and regional infrastructure. This is the key to unleashing ICT-based innovations and spurring the market for digital content and mobile service delivery.

Incentive Regulation

The agenda for infrastructure development must be guided by informed government policy. This is particularly crucial in smaller economies where market size does not present sufficient incentive for private sector investment. Incentive regulation to improve the current weak frameworks for stimulating growth and protecting consumer interest in the ICT sector will be demanded by the private sector. At the same time, governments will increasingly recognize that national benefits of ICT-enabled growth are too important to leave to the private sector to set the implementation agenda. More stakeholders will call for ICT adoption to be set within a wider context of national development.

Implications: Regulators have to adapt more quickly to technology changes. They must take the lead in ensuring that market forces align to social development objectives. Done well, this can translate to increased business innovation, improved delivery of government services, and greater consumer choice.

Cybersecurity

Cybercrime will increasingly challenge resource-constrained businesses and governments. Businesses, especially those with large, high-value networks, like financial services providers and energy companies, will require greater support cover not just nationally but regionally. A coordinated approach is critical to guiding national action and ensuring consistency and compatibility of action among nations. If regional governments are to secure their information and communications systems, identifying and investing in a central point of coordination for cybersecurity must be a top priority.

Implications: Governments must put aside petty internal and intra-regional differences and cooperate fully to ensure that cybercrime does not disrupt already fragile local economies and markets.

Mobile Phones, Mobile Apps, Mobile Services

Growth in mobile computing uptake and the availability of mobile apps that address local needs will continue. It will be driven by consumer-focused apps, but eventually business apps will catch on. As smartphones proliferate and mobile providers upgrade their networks to provide customers with faster mobile broadband access, software developers will have greater incentive to build apps. The improved user experience resulting from faster mobile data plans means that consumers will also have greater interest and incentive to use mobile apps and services.

Implications: The education sector must evolve to supply the human resources needed to support, not only the creation of digital content, but the development of new, digitally driven innovation and enterprises. This will create opportunity in the private and NGO sectors for training and capacity building beyond the traditional approaches.

Open Data

As governments increasingly recognize the potential of open data, they will move to make their datasets publicly accessible. Progressive administrations will seize the opportunity to demonstrate their commitment to transparency and accountability. Of course, they will also benefit by shortening the timeframe of new service roll-out and shifting the burden to innovators and entrepreneurs.

Implications: A huge opportunity has opened for entrepreneurs, researchers, and society. More public awareness is needed to stimulate innovation, collaboration and, most important, more efficient, personalized services for citizens.

Onward to 2012

There is wide recognition of the value of building knowledge-based economies and of investing in technology-driven systems. These are fundamental to economic and national development. There is also no denying that the technology revolution is exposing antiquated infrastructure and institutional processes; testing the philosophy and approach to education; highlighting the imperative for new approaches to human resource development; and creating new, strategic challenges for business, education, and political leaders alike.

Advances in technology have exacerbated the vulnerability of states to externally developed and controlled intellectual capital. The central role of information and communications technology in modern society amplifies the debate on priority and significance of deliberately cultivating and securing indigenous intellectual capital.
From all indications, 2012 will be a continuation of the positive trends and innovations that gained momentum in 2011. The most forward-thinking, innovative organizations will continue to adopt and deploy technologies to improve efficiencies and better engage customers and citizens.

In 2012, these developments in emerging markets will require strong, ethical leadership to ensure that investment in technology is matched by commitment to equitable social development.

Written by Bevil Wooding, Internet Strategist, Packet Clearing House

Solid hits for both carriers: not homeruns, but very strategic singles and doubles.

What results from these deals? Well on the positive side the two major carriers have more spectrum to satisfy consumer demand. On the negative side this spectrum initially was acquired by companies that offered the prospect for more competition. The competition will not occur, so the incumbents have even less downward rate pressure and the incentive to innovate.

No one has convinced me that the wireless marketplace in the United States has too many carriers and too much competition. Quite the contrary. But no carrier wants to compete with two "too big to fail" giants who have the customer base and spectrum to make quite costly competitive market entry, or even competition by existing carriers. These barriers to entry solidify incumbent market dominance, something the FCC could have prevented if it had reserved spectrum for new carriers and nondominant existing carriers.

This would not "promote competition for competition's sake." Instead it would enable sustainable competition to flourish in much the same way that airport authorities do not allow one or two airlines to capture all the landing slots. Airport authorities have learned the hard way that allowing one carrier to dominate results in higher prices. While price sensitive customers can vote with their dollars and take alternative transport, or drive to another airport, wireless subscribers have limited options.

Might a further consolidation of spectrum — the functional equivalent of landing slots — result in higher prices in the "robustly competitive" U.S. wireless marketplace?

Written by Rob Frieden, Pioneers Chair and Professor of Telecommunications and Law

… guide the FCC's work on technology and engineering issues, together with the FCC's Office of Engineering and Technology. He will advise on matters across the agency to ensure that FCC policies are driving technological innovation, including serving as a resource to FCC Commissioners. He will also help the FCC engage with technology experts outside the agency and promote technical excellence among agency staff. He will be based in the FCC's Office of Strategic Planning and Policy Analysis.

Henning brings an excellent background to this role, having been one of the co-authors of the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP - RFC 3261) and the Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP - RFC 3550 and 1889), the two main standards used in most Voice over IP (VoIP) systems today. Henning is also the author/co-author of over 70 other RFCs and countless Internet-Drafts and has been active with the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) since the 1990's. He also served on the Internet Architecture Board (IAB).

Given the recent FCC workshops on the transition of the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) to new technologies, it's great to have someone with Henning's background and knowledge in a prominent role at the FCC. Henning himself noted this in an email to the IETF DISPATCH working group mailing list, where he noted that the FCC is definitely seeking input from technical folks.

Obviously in this new role he'll be working not only with real-time communications but also with the wide range of other areas that the FCC covers. Regardless, it's excellent to have someone with Henning's background providing this level of advice and input to FCC activities.

Prior to joining the FCC, Henning has been a professor and chair of the Computer Science department at Columbia University. In my experience he's also just an all-around decent person and I'm very much looking forward to seeing what he'll do at the FCC.

Written by Dan York, Author and Speaker on Internet technologies for over 20 years

http://www.fcc.gov/live

The FCC's note about the workshops mentions that people watching the live stream can send in questions to panelists using either of two methods:

• by e-mailing livequestions@fcc.gov
• tweeting on Twitter using the hashtag #FCCLIVE

Given that a video recording was provided for the first workshop, hopefully a video recording of this second session will also be made available.

Today's sessions look to be quite interesting and contain quite a range of participants. The full schedule and list of participants is available on the FCC's web site (click on "Expand" in the lower right corner of the page), but here is the brief list:

* * *

9:30 a.m. — 9:40 a.m. - Welcome Remarks by Zachary Katz, Chief Counsel and Senior Legal Advisor, Office of the Chairman, FCC

9:40 a.m. — 10:45 a.m. - Impact of the Transition on the Technology and Economics of the PSTN
Participants include: University of Colorado, Carnegie Mellon, George Washington University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Gillan Associates, SIP Forum

10:45 a.m. — 11:45 p.m. - Policies of the PSTN (e.g., accessibility, reliability, affordability, and public safety)
Participants include: Tufts University, Consumer Federation of America, University of Wisconsin, Neustar

1:00 p.m. — 2:10 p.m. - Implementing the Transition to New Networks
Participants include: Verizon, Comcast, Carnegie Mellon, National Telecommunications and Information Association (NTIA), XO Communications

2:10 p.m. — 3:20 p.m. - Syncing Expectations, Emerging Technologies and the Public Good
Participants include: Georgetown University, University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania — Wharton, Acme Packet, Panasonic Systems Networks

3:20 p.m. — 4:30 p.m. - Economic Rationales for PSTN Transition
Participants include: Queens College, Indiana University, Syracuse University, Sanford Bernstein, University of Auckland, NZ

Written by Dan York, Author and Speaker on Internet technologies for over 20 years

http://www.fcc.gov/events/public-switched-telephone-network-transition

Given that the workshop was 4 hours long, you may or may not want to watch the entire session. The workshop was divided into four hour-long panels that consisted of brief presentations by the various panelists followed by questions to each panel from the moderator and attendees. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski also appeared briefly to provide a few comments.

The order of the workshop panels is as follows (and differs from the planned agenda only in that FCC Chairman Genachowski's comments came between the first two panels):

• The Impact of Broadband Communications on Public Safety and Network Reliability
• Remarks by Julius Genachowski, Chairman, FCC
• Disability Access in Substitute Services
• Technical Capacity, Capabilities, and Challenges Facing Future Rural Networks
• Identifying, Evaluating, and Transitioning Key PSTN Edge Functionalities (e.g., alarm monitoring, medical devices, and consumer equipment)

In his comments, FCC Chairman Genachowski discussed how the world is changing and moving to an IP network. He highlighted that 19% of the nation's telephone connections are already interconnected VoIP and 30% of Americans have cut the cord and moved to wireless. He spoke of the role of IP networks in unleashing innovation, contributing to job creation, education, etc. and indicated he and the commission are seeking answers to questions such as these:

• how do we minimize consumer disruption in the move?
• how do we ensure public safety access?
• how do preserve and promote disability access?
• how do we ensure ubiquitous access?
• how do we ensure access to high quality service?
• how do we best foster innovation?

He emphasized that the current PSTN is reliable and accessible and we don't want to lose benefits of old system. He indicated that he wants to enable the private sector to take the best benefits of PSTN and bring those into the future while taking advantage of new technologies.

The panelists in each section all saw the transition as inevitable, indicated it was already well underway and raised legitimate concerns to be considered with regard to their topic area. For instance, the sheer number of installed devices connected to the PSTN will take quite some time to change over to devices that can work with IP networks. An example was given that a standard for alarm systems over IP was only standardized within the TIA in 2007 and a similar standard for smoke alarms over IP was only standardized in 2010. It will take quite some time for devices with those standards to propagate out into commercial availability and transition options may need to be evaluated. Similarly, while the use of traditional TTY devices continues to decline, there is still a huge installed base. These TTY devices are designed to work over the PSTN and the traditional protocol used does not work well over IP. These devices will need to either be replaced or have a transition device such as a terminal adapter installed to work over IP networks.

All in all it was quite an interesting session and hopefully did provide the FCC with the type of feedback they were seeking. The second FCC workshop on the PSTN transition takes place tomorrow, December 14, 2011.

Written by Dan York, Author and Speaker on Internet technologies for over 20 years

Joe Pasqua – Appointed as Vice President of Neustar Labs.

"Joe's energy and expertise enhance Neustar's efforts to bring more precise and actionable insights to our customers through innovative technologies and services," said Mark Bregman, Neustar's senior vice president and chief technology officer. "Joe's experience leading world-class research and development organizations is a perfect fit with Neustar, which has a strong track record creating innovative addressing, routing and authentication services for networks and some of the world's largest authoritative databases."

Neustar recently broke new ground with services for the telecommunications, Internet and media industries through its development of TextEverywhere, which allows texting from any device, such as TVs, tablets and laptops; Ultraviolet™, which provides consumers with a digital locker for all of their filmed entertainment; and NeuSentry, a service that detects cyber-breaches, even in companies employing state-of-the-art defenses, by monitoring the outside of an enterprise's network.

"It's an honor to lead the newly created Neustar Labs. Neustar's reputation for being trusted and neutral, secure and reliable, and above all tested, means that this is an ideal organization to join at this exciting moment. I look forward to working with a great group of technologists to leverage our unique market position and massive data assets to provide value to our customers," said Pasqua.

Mr. Pasqua has been in the technology industry since 1981. In addition to his role at Symantec, he has worked for Xerox, Oracle (where he was employee number 60), Adobe and several start-ups. He has more than 10 issued patents, and additional patents pending. Mr. Pasqua earned simultaneous Bachelor of Science degrees in Computer Science and Mathematics in 1981 from California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo.

I'm advocating for a model more like Internet domain names. Let consumers get their own telephone numbers from an entity similar to a domain name registry. Here's how it could work: the registry maintains an inventory of telephone numbers. It provides credentials to the consumer so that he can prove he owns the telephone number. The consumer then brings the telephone number and credential to their chosen service provider to activate their service. The service provider also uses the credential to update the registry with any relevant information. If the consumer wants to change service providers he brings the credential to the new service provider.

The registry could be funded by fees to either the service providers or directly to the consumer.

There are a number of benefits to this approach. First by allowing service providers to get telephone numbers on behalf of their customer, but not to carry an inventory, it conserves telephone numbers. Second, activation of telephone numbers will be immediate through the registry. Third, the registry will make all relevant information readily available to all. And finally, rather than taking something away from service providers this process actually frees them up from something they don't need to do. Why manage a vast nationwide inventory of telephone numbers requiring a significant investment in systems, processes and people? Let the consumers do it. The telephone number is simply an attribute of their service. It's a win-win situation for all.

Another simple thing to do is to activate all 792 central office codes in each existing geographic area code. Doing so will increase the available inventory of telephone numbers from 1.4B to 2.8B and would provide more consumer choice. (There are about 350 area codes, each with about 8M telephone numbers; 350 x 8M = 2.8B.) If done right, we would never need to implement a new area code because of exhaust. (There are 300M people in the US using an average of 2.5 telephone numbers each for a total of 750M assigned telephone numbers. Double 2.5 to 5 and we're still well below 2.8B assigned telephone numbers.) However if an area code needs to be implemented the registry would manage that process.

We should also do away with rate centers. Rate centers are irrelevant to the vast majority of billing plans and should not be relevant in a post-PSTN world. People no longer look for a central office code that is close to their home, e.g., PYramid 1 and Valley Stream. There's no need to let rate centers hold unused telephone numbers hostage.

I'm not naïve, I know that there will be significant issues to work out. We need to address current inventory, legacy systems and networks — how to implement the new regime; and how to transition to it — to name just a few issues. We need to ensure that speculation and squatting don't have a negative effect on conservation and consumers' desires. How do we manage highly desirable area codes (e.g., 212, 321, 777) and telephone numbers (e.g., repeating digits)? Should there be a link between a person's geography and the telephone numbers they can register? How do we maintain the important services for law enforcement and public safety? This will have far reaching effects and will take many years to plan and implement. There is a lot of work to do.

It is 2011 and the pace of change is constantly accelerating. It was about 80 years between TN 1.0 and TN 2.0. It's been about 20 years since TN 2.0. Service providers are evolving their networks to advanced IP platforms. All communication is rapidly moving to the Internet. The time to start planning TN 3.0 is now.

Written by Tom McGarry, VP of Research at Neustar Labs

TD-LTE offers the potential for utilizing unpaired spectrum and enhancing operational efficiency.

Worldwide, the technology is being rolled out in a number of countries including China, Japan, Saudia Arabia, Sweden, Poland and more.

China Mobile is cooperating with a number of countries worldwide. Underlining the need for cooperation, the dream is for "one device that could be used around the world," and China Telecom believes that this would come true in a 4G era.

Currently accepted by ITU-R as an IMT-Advanced candidate technology, an issue which will be high on the agenda of the upcoming ITU World Radiocommunication Conference in 2012, the session summed up the potential that TD-LTE offers in delivering next-generation wireless services, the current state of play, and how sustained international cooperation and debate will help usher in the next generation of wireless technology.

Written by Paul Budde, Managing Director of Paul Budde Communication

Read full story: Bloomberg

Jeff Simmermon, Time Warner Cable's Director of Digital Communication writes: "It took the better part of the day to identify the problem, dig in, seperate the cable out and splice in a new piece of fiber-optic cable. Each of those hair-width fibers [shown in photographs] has to be reconnected to precisely the correct wire, or else the whole thing doesn't work. Imagine re-connecting a severed ponytail and you've got the basic idea. This is both extremely unusual and business as usual for us. It's extremely unusual because, well, freakish subterranean fires don't happen that often. And while outages are an unfortunate part of running a big, complex system, one that affects that many people for that long is pretty rare."