Cable operator Comcast, a leader in the broadband services space, added 336,000 broadband internet subscribers and 146,000 voice subscribers in the 4th quarter of 2011 alone.

“Despite a high level of broadband penetration in the U.S., the top broadband providers added 88% as many subscribers in 2011 as in 2010,” said Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for Leichtman Research Group, Inc. “At the end of 2011, the top broadband providers in the U.S. cumulatively had over 78.6 million subscribers, an increase of nearly 25 million over the past five years.”

Get broadband by the numbers here

Text2Residents.com offers users a custom text and voice application that will not only save time and increase productivity for management and staff, but also help foster a more effective line of communication between management and residents by leveraging the power of group text and voice messaging.

“We saw the need for our multifamily and senior living clients to integrate mobile applications to help communicate better – and more efficiently – with residents and staff members. Virtually everyone carries a cell phone wherever they go, so a group texting platform was the perfect solution for our new service,” says Elizabeth Supica, VP of TelCon Associates.

Although it works “in the cloud”, the platform is designed to be simple and super easy to use.

For more information, and to test drive the service FREE for 30 days, visit Text2Residents.com

One fiber consists of a glass strand, only as wide as a human hair – about 10 microns across.  Each strand of fiber is covered with a shield of plastic to protect it and keep the light contained inside.  The word “optics” includes anything to do with sight.  You may have noticed that it is very hard to see without light so light behavior is a natural part of this topic as well.

The Corning Glass Works company produced the first optical fiber suitable for long-range communication in 1970. These fibers are bound together in cables and distributed in the network.

Have you ever seen a decorative lamp that shines light through tiny strands?

That is exactly what fiber used in telecommunications networks looks like – with some modifications of course.  Fibers used in telecom are specially manufactured to keep the light going around corners and for long distances.  Believe it or not, some of your calls or computer traffic is transmitted on a laser or LED light pulsing through these tiny strands.

Fiber is a much more efficient method for transmitting signals than copper wires for several reasons:

1)  A strand of fiber optics is immune to electromagnetic interference.   This is major issue because the modern world is surrounded by electronic items that emit electromagnetic energy.  Electromagnetic  interference is caused by the energy that “leaks out” and affects other electronics around it.  This type  interference can even come from simple household appliances such as a toaster oven or microwave.

2) Another fabulous characteristic of fiber is that huge amounts of information can be transmitted on one tiny filament of glass.    In most cases, fiber does not go directly into homes and businesses, so special electronics are needed to convert the light pulses back into signals that can be transmitted through the “last mile” of copper wires.

Previously, the network was described in terms of copper wire cables.   While all of that is true, there are some of the paths have been either replaced or enhanced with fiber optic cables and equipment.

For example, most (if not all) of the trunk cables between central offices have been replaced with fiber optic systems to dramatically increase the speed of those transmissions.  AT&T Long Lines have been replaced for the same reason.

At present, the Network is a combination of these two types of systems; copper and fiber optics.   At some point in the near future, however,  the use of copper wired cables will be a thing of the past and all phone and computer transmissions will have fiber optic components.

Some companies have already begun offering fiber to the home; known as FTTP—Fiber To The Premise.  A fiber enters your home and is connected to a conversion box that connects to your TV, phone and computer.

At present, the only reason transmission of voice and computer signals are not at the speed of light is the mixture of copper and fiber in the network and the restrictions of the equipment that interprets these signals.

Telecom Networks 101: Part 1

Telecom Networks 101: Part 2

About the Author:

Saundra O’Neill began working for AT&T, and has spent the last fifteen years in utility design engineering for construction.  During this time her work in several fields of engineering (Civil, Structural and Telecom) established real world knowledge and experience in a wide variety of processes in the building industry with an emphasis on telecom Outside Plant and its processes.  Her experience and a desire to communicate/teach others, has expanded into technical writing – including software documentation and a variety of articles covering the telecommunications industry.  Visit Sandy’s simple telecommunications blog.

When you pick your phone you get what is known as a “dial-tone”.  A dial-tone simply tells the caller that the switch is ready to receive a phone number so that it can connect two parties.  If the caller does not respond in a short amount of time, the switch will send a very loud and annoying tone that if not responded to, will cut you off.  Only so many callers can gain access to the switch at any particular moment.

Most new phones work like a cell phone; that is, you dial the number then press send.  This eliminates the lag between dial tone and numbers dialed—which resolves the problem of too many people taking too long to dial a number.

“Where is the switch?”

It is housed in a centrally located building in your neighborhood called the Central Office. It usually looks like a large, mostly windowless fortress. The buildings are usually constructed to withstand natural—and unnatural—disasters to protect the heart of the local network.  Your phone line is connected by a vast array of cables, wires and equipment, that terminate at the central office.  This is where your phone line is connected to the rest of the world.

The Central Office – (CO)

The Central Office (or CO—what the industry calls it) —houses the switch, in-coming and out-going cables, cable and equipment racks and a bank of batteries with power generators in case the local power goes out. Years ago it used to be a noisy place where mechanical switches opened and closed 24/7. But now the switch is an electronic device that only hums to the music of telephone traffic.

The switch interprets who you are calling based on the numbers dialed and sends the call down the correct cable. If you dial an area code that is different from yours, the switch knows you want to call someone outside your area. The next three numbers are called the exchange. This further tells the switch where in the neighborhood that person is and finally, the last four numbers identify who you are calling.

The cables leaving the central office are designed geographically in an orderly fashion. The cable leaving to the north is designated as Route 1, to the east Route 2, to the South Route 3 and Route 4 goes west.  These cables are designed in groups of wire pairs and those groups have numbers to identify them. A pair of wires is required for every individual telephone number—in most cases—depending on your service.

Fiber Optic Cable

Fiber optic cable has various configurations but they also have letters and numbers for the identification of each fiber.  These cables are connected to the switch through a dizzying number of connections on racks where each pair of wires or optic fiber is terminated.  Somewhere in there is your pair of wires or light pulse.  The same two wires that enter your phone must travel from your home or office to the racks.  Some of these racks house fiber optic equipment that interprets light pulse transmissions from the fiber optic cables.

Let’s follow a copper cable out from the central office and see what happens to it.  (See Figure 1.)

The Route 1 cable we will call “Cable 1”.  It is huge because it is going to end up at every service location in the northern part of the neighborhood—which could be miles away.

For the purpose of explanation, let’s assume this cable is 36 hundred pairs of wires (noted as 1, 1-3600).  It travels north underground through conduit and manholes—large underground concrete cable vaults that a man could stand in—and when it exits a manhole, it may go up a telephone pole or is directly buried.

It then branches off into smaller cables, like the limbs of a tree, and then goes through distribution cabinets to further divide the route until your pair enters your residence or business. The same thing occurs on the other routes. These 4 cable routes and central office that services it is called a wire center.

So how does your call get to your friend several miles away in another wire center?

Central offices are connected by a trunk cable. It is called a “trunk” because it is only used to send traffic between central offices or over long distances, and not directly to a customer.

See below.

When you dial a telephone number, the switch “knows” that the first three numbers are not in your wire center.  Your call is switched to the trunk cable that goes to the other wire center.  Once “switched” to that central office, the second switch interprets the whole number and sends a ring to the person being called.

All this switching occurs at a fantastic speed.  The labyrinth of central office to central office connections handles your calls to a larger area around your home or office.

Long Distance Calling: Phoenix to New York

Switching through every central office between Phoenix and New York is going to take too long and jam up local traffic. Never fear! The brains at AT&T worked out something to handle it.

An area code is a larger geographic area containing many wire centers. When you dial the area code for New York, your central office switch recognizes that your call is long distance.  The switch directs your call onto what is known as the AT&T Long Lines system.  It is no longer called
AT&T Long Lines but the concept is the same.

The figure below  shows a simplistic diagram of a Long Lines route. You can think of it as getting on the interstate highway instead of plodding along the
surface streets and stopping at every red light. Your call could travel through a number of Long Lines switching stations, but this is just an example.  These switching stations either pass the call to the next Long Lines station or send it to a local central office for routing, as described earlier.

To reach  another continent your call will need to cross oceans and other bodies of water.  Intercontinental cables were placed many decades ago to connect the U.S. with Europe, the Caribbean, and East Asia. A company branch of AT&T dropped huge lead-protected submarine cables off the back of a ship from one coast to the other—splicing them together as they went. These cables have since been replaced by fiber optic cables.

Telecommunication satellites are used to bounce intercontinental calls from one place to another. Once the call gets to the other continent, that country’s version of Long Lines picks up the call and switches it along as described previously.

Great—now we’re all connected!

Telecom Networks 101: Part 1

About the Author:

Saundra O’Neill began working for AT&T, and has spent the last fifteen years in utility design engineering for construction.  During this time her work in several fields of engineering (Civil, Structural and Telecom) established real world knowledge and experience in a wide variety of processes in the building industry with an emphasis on telecom Outside Plant and its processes.  Her experience and a desire to communicate/teach others, has expanded into technical writing – including software documentation and a variety of articles covering the telecommunications industry. Visit Sandy’s simple telecommunications blog.

]]> http://www.telecomauditguide.com/telecommunications/telecom-networks-101-dial-tones-switches-and-the-co/feed/ 2 http://www.telecomauditguide.com/telecommunications/telecom-101-origins-and-history-of-the-telecom-network/ http://www.telecomauditguide.com/telecommunications/telecom-101-origins-and-history-of-the-telecom-network/#comments Mon, 13 Dec 2010 19:59:00 +0000 admin http://www.telecomauditguide.com/?p=335 A good auditor is not only skilled in the myriad ways of finding savings throughout the vast landscape of telecom bills, contracts, CSRs, etc.,  he (or she) inherently possesses a thorough grasp of the origins and history of the telecom industry itself.

“Telecommunications” refers to something vastly different than it did just a few decades ago.  As recent as the early 1970s, “telecom” primarily referred to anything (and everything) to do with the telephone.   AT&T was the primary player, and cell phones, fax machines, the Internet and email were still years away.

Our new series entitled “Telecom Networks 101″ covers some basic areas that all telecom auditors should know.   Designed for the “non-techie”, the series of articles are easy to read and will give you basic insight as to how the telecom network of 2010 evolved over the last 140 years.

Telecom Networks 101: Who Built the Network?

A “network” could be defined as, any system of things that are tied together. The network described here consists of wire and optic cable, equipment, satellites, antennae, and microwave equipment that tie your home or business to the rest of the world. Without this network the Internet, cell and ordinary phones would not work at all.

To answer the question of who built this network in the United States, some history of the Bell System is needed.

The Beginning: The Bell System

The Macmillan Dictionary for Students defines telecommunications as, “…communicating or sending messages over long distances by electronic means….” The word literally means, communicating across a distance. The industry is known as telecom for short.

In the 1870’s Alexander Graham Bell spilled acid in his lab and called to his assistant in another room, “Mr. Watson, come here. I want you”.  To his assistant’s surprise he heard the call through Bell’s first telephone device. Interesting that the first reported telephone message was a 911 call! Since that time, there has been an explosion of devices that transmit information “across a distance”.

The first telephone company was founded in 1877 just after Alexander Graham Bell obtained a patent for the telephone in the United States. It was called the Bell Telephone Company. Existing telegraph wire was in place from Samuel Morse’s telegraph network and was used for some of the first telephone transmissions.

Others across the country were stringing wire and offering service to people in those local areas. As demand grew for this invention, new alliances were made to join local networks to each other and the world. This expansion became the American Telephone and Telegraph Company.

AT&T for Short

The name was shortened to the familiar AT&T and the network they created is known as the Bell System. This company had help from subsidiaries such as Bell Labs—big brains that invented the transistor and carried on Alexander Graham Bell’s legacy—and Western Electric that made telephones and other electronic equipment for telecom.

Litigation Changes Everything

Government watchdogs were already in place to regulate telecommunications; the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on the federal side, and the Public Service Commission (PSC) on the state side. They approved how much was charged for service, watched over every new innovation, and investigated any report of abuse. In fact, they still do.

In 1974, The MCI Communications Corporation filed a lawsuit against AT&T.   This was coupled with an antitrust suit filed by the Department of Justice for the purpose of breaking up the monopoly. That suit was won in 1980 which caused AT&T to divest itself of Western Electric and Bell Labs. Regional companies—known as RBOCS (Regional Bell Operating Companies)—were created such, as Southern Bell—my alma mater.

Before the divestiture of AT&T, it was the largest telecom company in America.  It made sense, in the beginning, to have one company to coordinate this massive network.  They gave you a phone along with your service and controlled the whole market; including the manufacture of telephones and telecom transmission equipment. When you disconnected your service the phone was returned to the company.

This divestiture started a storm of innovation and competition. Up to that point, AT&T—and a few small regional companies—built the network that spanned the U.S. and connected the rest of the world. Companies were bought, sold, combined and divested. Recently AT&T merged with some of its old holdings.   It is hard to keep track, if you are not paying close attention. Suffice it to say, a lot has transpired since the 1970’s.

Alexander Graham Bell – the father of the Bell System. He worked with the deaf and was trying to find solutions to that problem. Little did he know his invention would be responsible for communications to the world with the touch of a few buttons—and make the Internet possible. The Internet’s use of this network has created countless ways to speak, write and transmit information across a distance.

About the Author:

Saundra O’Neill began working for AT&T, and has spent the last fifteen years in utility design engineering for construction.  During this time her work in several fields of engineering (Civil, Structural and Telecom) established real world knowledge and experience in a wide variety of processes in the building industry with an emphasis on telecom Outside Plant and its processes.  Her experience and a desire to communicate/teach others, has expanded into technical writing – including software documentation and a variety of articles covering the telecommunications industry. Visit Sandy’s simple telecommunications blog.

The state of the economy has prompted corporate organizations to seek ways to reduce corporate spending wherever possible. Telecommunications spending is an area that is ripe with potential savings opportunities, but it still remains one that is often overlooked by corporate executives and management.

“Based on our 39 years of experience in the telecom auditing field, we estimate that about 93% of U.S. companies pay more than necessary for telecom voice and data services”, says Karen Thatcher, President and CEO of TelCon Associates, Inc. This seminar is designed to teach the same auditing process and methodology that TelCon Associates has used to save clients tens of millions of dollars.”

Essentials of Telecom Auditing includes informative sessions on a wide variety of telecom cost-saving opportunities, including local, long distance, wireless, telecom taxes, customer service records, and more. Many of the scheduled sessions will be “hands-on”, meaning that actual bills will be shown, and participants will have the opportunity to identify problems on them before they are reviewed as a group. “I like to have people learn by doing, so much of the seminar will be spent examining and auditing real bills and customer service records”, says Thatcher. “I guarantee that seminar attendees will return home with the knowledge and skills necessary to conduct a thorough telecom audit that could result in significant annual savings for their organizations.”

About TelCon Associates

TelCon Associates is a full service telecom auditing and bill management company that specializes in reducing and controlling telecom costs for organizations of all sizes. For more information on the Essentials of Telecom Auditing seminar, to be held on October 25th-26th, 2010, visit http://www.telecomaudittraining.com.

Day-to-day management of telecommunications services and systems typically includes many tasks – authorizing payment of bills, allocating costs, modifying and/or optimizing facilities, controlling and curbing abuse, detecting and correcting problems, training, improving user productivity, etc.

Effectively managing and controlling telecom costs is directly related to your organization’s ability to efficiently manage and process monthly telecom information.

First Things First: Get Organized

The first step in managing telecom information successfully is to implement a compartmental system for staying organized.  Operational information should be grouped into five major categories – account orders and bill tracking, inventory status, usage of system capabilities and carrier facilities, local and long-distance calling, and service and diagnostic information.

Compartment #1: Account Orders and Bill Tracking

The number and formats of separate bills received each month from telecommunications vendors has multiplied many times over in the last 20 years. It is not unusual for even small to mid-size companies to handle hundreds or even thousands of bills every month.

Develop an internal system for keeping track of account orders and be sure that every bill can be easily retrieved and tracked. Use of a systematic control record for each account is essential for staying organized. Simple to complex software is now available commercially or you may choose to develop your own to suit your company’s unique needs. Whatever option you choose, be sure that your system provides a complete visual status of each account onto a single display.

Compartment #2: Inventory Status

Maintaining and updating inventory records for all aspects of your telecommunications department is essential for achieving long term cost-reduction results. The term “inventory” applies not only to hardware, such as wireless handsets, but also to station assignments, station numbers, carrier facilities, and wiring.

Large organizations will almost certainly use a software-based automated inventory control system. As with any system, the software is only as good as the data the system is fed. Before entering any information into an inventory database, a thorough audit and inventory analysis of equipment and services should be conducted. Failure to take the proper steps in setting up your inventory system will almost certainly result in flawed information from the outset.

Compartment #3: Information Drawn From Systems and Carrier Facilities

Collecting and analyzing system usage data is an often overlooked area of telecom cost-reduction. This information is typically drawn from PBX systems or carrier facilities or suppliers. Most PBX and ACD systems store data on how often various features are used. Older systems maintain proprietary control of system access, requiring users to obtain data through the supplier.

Analysis of system usage data will reveal which productivity-improving features are being utilized and by whom. It will also reveal areas where overprovisioning is evident. Be sure to instruct employees on how they can more effectively use the system. Eliminate areas where features are either not used or not needed.

Compartment #4: Local, Long-Distance and Wireless Call Activity

Many options are now available to collect, organize and report on call activity. Modern PBX, hybrid and electronic key systems make Station Message Detail Recording (SMDR) data available through an RS-232-C interface. SMDR data typically provides a record for each call – the station originating the call, date and time of origination, number dialed, duration, and the facility carrying the call. Most carriers now provide this billing information electronically.

Once obtained and organized, this information can then be fed directly to on-site services for processing. There are hundreds of commercially available software programs for sorting and organizing call detail. Reports generally fall into one of three categories – system management reports and summaries, cost allocation reports, and traffic reports. Each provide valuable information for determining the appropriate cost-reduction measures needed.

Compartment #5: Service and Diagnostic Information

A variety of diagnostic routines can be performed on most current telephone systems. These tests will reveal non-working aspects of the system. Traffic reports will sometimes indicate problems with facilities such as a trunk that shows no usage. Check with your suppliers for a list of diagnostic tests they can perform that you may not be aware of.

Don’t let the enormous flow of monthly telecommunications information overwhelm you. With proper organization and analysis, the data collected from each of the above compartments will invariably reveal areas that are ripe for cost-savings.

Submitted by: TelCon Associates, Inc.