Shulist Group Inc.

The weekly weird telecom story has to go to the four stories over at TotalTelecom.

1. Seems that a Polish fellow living on Internet Street is moving (reason: no internet),
2. The GPS takes you to an unexpected good time (memo to self: wear flak vest),
3. Software that tells me I’m ugly—perhaps I am boot ugly, and
4. Driving, talking and other ruminations.

Ahhh a little levity never hurt anyone.

Over at Michael Geist’s blog (its on our must read list) he commented on Canada being a spam haven. Having read his particular blog a number of times we felt it necessary to comment. We think he’s on the mark when it comes to suggesting that Canada needs stronger spam laws but may be off the mark in concluding that Canada is a spammers delight.
Continue reading ‘Spammers In Great White North?’ »

Over at Billing and OSS World they are running an interesting poll. Its asking about the degree to which you would trust your mobile provider to personalize information to you. It seems to us that this is a great question to open the debate about just what service providers are doing with our information. Over the next few weeks we are interested is seeing the results as the votes get tallied.
Continue reading ‘Trust Your Mobile Provider?’ »

The Canadian telecom industry lost one of its greatest characters with the passing of Ted Rogers. I had the good fortune to work with him and get to know him for about three years.  His attitude, interest and business smarts were everything the legends make him out to be.

Meeting Ted

I remember fondly my first real business meeting with Ted. I was working at the time for Unitel Communications Inc.—a struggling contender to the early long distance competition. Rogers had a shareholding in the company and Ted sat on our board.

My job was to interpret the network engineer’s grand plans for infrastructure and convert these into dollars and sense for the board. At the time we were proposing what were seen as obscene amounts of money to become a facilities based long distance carrier. Never in the history of Canadian telecom had a non-incumbent company thought of spending as much as was proposed. So it was with some trepidation that I walked into the board with my deck of slides.

Wherein Ted does his thing

Ted ripped into us with gusto and thankfully we were armed to the teeth. With a few minor exceptions he fully endorsed our proposal. This was no small feat as Ted loved technology and would spend an inordinate amount of time probing all aspects of what was then pretty new technology. It was one of the longest board meetings on record. About three hours after the meeting he called me personally (a first for me) and thanked me for the great discussion, commented on the hard work we had put into the plan, and encouraged rapid progress.

Over the course of the next few years we had the opportunity to meet over other business and he always was thorough, interested and appreciative of the never ending hard work we had all undertaken. No matter how difficult the topic, or how challenging the subject was, he remained a gentleman to the end.

Lessons learned

From my work with him and observations I made of his actions I learned three important lessons:

1. Always look beyond the ‘now’ to see what could be in the future. The man had an uncanny ability to understand complex technology and think how it might be a new service offering, a major competitive advantage or a part of a bigger initiative. He was not a small thinker and expected his staff to be big thinkers too.
2. There is no such thing as a dead end. His opinion of things that slowed progress was that they were there to challenge your determination. If you were determined to achieve something, no obstruction would stop you from getting it done, as long as you were committed. For him it often meant finding a unique or creative way around the obstacles to progress.
3. Set bold challenging goals for your staff and take the time to follow up to make sure they are moving in the right direction. He often tossed out a big hairy challenge on the board room table and looked around at who might pick it up and run with it. The people, who did pick up the challenges, gained a different level of respect from him when they were able to achieve the outcomes.

So long

Alas the world will miss this man. I am happy to have known him for a very brief time.

We are were rather embarrassed recently by a friend asking if we’d seen Canada’s Telecommunications Hall of Fame? Why no, we’d never knew such a thing existed. What with the demise of many of the Telephone Pioneer organizations it seems we’ve lost much of our telecom history. Gone are the days that in almost every telecoms office building there was some historical display managed by the Pioneers.
Continue reading ‘Telecom Hall Of Fame’ »

Seems like the FCC has a little bit of ’splaining to do. They sort of, ummm…, paid the US telcos a little too much money from the Universal Service Fund (USF). We reported on some shenanigans at the FCC a while ago and it seems it continues to provide more entertainment value. It appears that they have given out $970M more than they should have.

Continue reading ‘Free Money, Git Yer Free Money’ »

Many of the vendors and carriers who advertise (or request) “carrier class” or “carrier grade” products, really do not know of what they speak! In most cases this is said as though it were some worldwide unspoken standard. This is not the case. In our experience the need to develop a standard by which you can measure or compare independent solutions sets, against a defined expectation, is a must, if you wish to be successful in selecting, deploying and managing support system solutions.

In our work in the past we have been asked for definitions of carrier class (or grade) standards. We think there is a range of options that any carrier might find acceptable. So at the risk of being considered buffoons, here goes:
Continue reading ‘Carrier Class Defined’ »