Telco Origins – Part 3

I know it’s been a lot longer than I’d originally planned but I wanted to get back the history of telecommunications.  I would have done so sooner but I was on the phone.  :-)  Speaking of Mr. Bell’s grand invention, once the phone had been firmly established by 1876, the first telephone switchboard was installed in Connecticut two years later in 1878.  Call volume had obviously increased, most likely due to the pioneers of telemarketing.  This was about the time that the first appearance of formal telephone numbers, and directories listing those addresses, were also made available to the public.

By the early 1880’s there were a number of small telephone exchanges throughout the USA and Europe but caller range was clearly limited.  Because of the crude technology that limited connection distance to about 100 miles, the Bell company focused on building and selling equipment to service rich people and businesses.  The first long distance connection, between New York and Boston, was approximately 300 miles long and came online in 1884.  All calls were required to be connected by a third party operator.  Had tech acronyms been popular back then they would have termed it H.O.T. (Human Operated Transfer) calling.

Bell’s patents ran out at the turn of the century leading to greater competition and the rise of several thousand independent phone companies.  Little did anyone realize at the time that, despite so many new players entering the market, the stage was being set for the start of the largest monopoly of them all – AT&T.  But first, we need to talk about a fellow named Marconi and this little invention of his called the radio.  More next time….

Viva Las Vegas

I want to take a quick break from the history of telco (rest assured, I'll get back to Ma. Bell's accomplishments next week ) and mention a Cywest road trip next week to the 36th Annual International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) Conference in Las Vegas, NV.  I'm the featured speaker at an exclusive luncheon on Tuesday regarding digital security and its impact on commerce in today's global market.  Being in Sin City, one of the things you realize is the sin so many companies have of blissful ignorance when it comes to how well they are protected.  You can implement firewalls, secure data repositories, etc and still find yourself imminently vulnerable from the most unexpected source of all:  the smart phone used by any company employee.

A number of software developers have created Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions to address this need but most focus solely on the idea of containerization, the securing of company data on the phone from unauthorized use.  Left unattended is the fact that those same phones can be easily hacked from the outside and become infiltration agents for those who intend harm.  During the lunch, we'll be spotlighting several new technologies we have coming to market that, not only close this loophole, but empower the leaders of the targeted companies to turn the tables effectively on their hacker.

So much of the corporate mentality when it comes to security is to adopt a defensive posture, to wait for a threat or breach to occur and then react to it with all the powers at their disposal.  Unfortunately, by then at least some damage has occurred or, at best, the company is spending too much to expedite solutions.  We take the opposite view and help our customers create an offensive minded approach that more than levels the playing field.  Our solutions are unique and they're designed for the security person who understands how critical it is to be addressing the next generation of threats BEFORE they arrive.

I look forward to seeing everyone in Las Vegas and if you'd like to meet individually to discuss your firm's security or telco issues, just let me know.  For those who can't attend but would like more info about what we're developing, let me know that as well.  Safe travels to all who are making their way to the conference. 

Telco Origins - Part 2

One of the most common complaints about telecommunications companies are their size.  These large global conglomerates have difficulty responding quickly to their clients, or delivering a personalized suite of services that more accurately reflect on what those customers need compared to a one size fits all model.  That's where the Cywest approach actually makes a difference. We bring that level of personalization and service to fill in the gap that the large carriers aren't effectively built to do.  Everyone thinks the issue of telecommunication monopolies is relatively new, that it began over the last two decades as technology advanced heavily into both the office and the home.  This is simply not true.

In reality, Western Union, the company that we think of whenever we have to wire money in a pinch to our children, or to bail out a loved one that's had one too many, was the first telecommunications monopoly.  It was formed initially as a regional alliance of several smaller firms.  They divided up the country in sections amongst themselves, acting much like a cartel would do today in the drug trade.  The Civil War helped drive up the profits and fees of the company because the telegraph was so valuable in passing information back and forth.  The confederate states could not match the level of sophistication and connectivity of the Union army.  Had they been able to do so, the world might be a very different place.  Following the war, Western Union took over many of the lines that were built by the government, making themselves virtually the only game in town.

For several years after that, efforts were made to install telegraph lines under the water in order to expand communications globally.  Most of the early efforts, primarily sponsored by America, failed but by 1866, the first successful connection between England and America was established.  It would take another fifty years to actually get connectivity across the Pacific Ocean.

Meanwhile, a Scotsman living and working in Boston named Alexander Graham Bell was experimenting with a machine that could diagram the shapes of sound waves by tracing their vibrations.  He thought that, if he could generate moving electrical currents that corresponded to sound, he could then audibly transfer those currents to an alternate endpoint and convert them back to sound on the other end.  All he needed was a working model and some financial backing in order to test his theory.  Two wealthy backers, named Gardiner Hubbard and Thomas Sanders, financially backed Bell's experiments and helped him attain patents for his creation.  In 1875, Bell achieved the first early working telephone and filed for rights ownership in early 1876.  Even then, the telco industry was full of controversy as a man named Elisha Gray, who was doing his own experiments with acoustic telegraphy, fought unsuccessfully for the rights.

Once again, history teases us with what might have been - it's hard to think of "ringing a gray" when it's time to call the kids in for supper.

More to come...

Telco Origins - Part 1

I was giving a lecture to a group of eager young students a few years ago and I asked if any of them had an idea of who created American telecommunications.  I chuckled when one student raised their hand and guessed Ma Bell, as if that was the name of an elderly maternal woman that had launched a global industry. Part of the reason for the ignorance is that, like so much of the telco industry, the story has many facets that make it difficult to definitively trace the history.  That ends today.  I am going to tell you the annotated history of telco over the next few weeks because, in order to understand the business and its path of evolution, it helps to know the back story and how decisions and innovations have shaped our industry over the years.

You could argue that the early use of smoke signals and drums by the natives were actually the first recorded use of telecommunications.  They were used in much the same societal role as systems today - to send messages to, and communicate with, the applicable parties they wished to reach.  Can you imagine the stress of primitive IT workers way back then?  There was no such thing as an email registering a complaint; it was more likely a disgruntled colleague showed dissatisfaction by shooting the technician with an arrow or clubbing them over the head.  Job security was fleeting.

While there were basic systems developed in the late 1700's through the early 1800's resulting in the creation of the semaphore system, that system itself was abandoned several years later because the towers were way too expensive and it was difficult to find enough operators that had the skill to actually use and manage it.  The telegraph system, invented by Samuel Morse in 1844, is considered the earliest industrial iteration of successful telecommunications. Originally used primarily by the Post Office, the telegraph system actually grew and expanded along with the building of the railroad systems. These communication links  were integral in moving goods and people from East to West and back again along the tracks.  In many instances telco connectivity was established in an area before being followed by railroad construction.  No wonder "training" is such a huge requirement for our industry!  :-)

A Day of (digital) Freedom...

As the nation celebrates its successful fight for liberty on this fourth of July, it's fascinating to note how many liberties we've willfully given up these last ten years and how that impacts security for both cloud storage and data transmission.  One of the major factors individuals and companies cite as their reason for refusing cloud based technologies is security; they stress the need to ensure privacy and corporate governance that can be better achieved if the information is on premise.

http://edgestrategies.com/component/k2/item/117-just-released-2012-microsoft-edge-technologies-smb-cloud-adoption-study.html

While this logic may seem sound and provide a sense of comfort, this is simply not the case.  As more information comes to light about the NSA activities and Google's own admissions about data mining, the idea that shared information is safe just because it's behind your firewall is an illusion.  In fact, leading edge cloud storage providers can actually offer greater protection of your data than private enterprises for a fraction of the cost, monitored around the clock and with better ease of use to both the client and their customers. For example, an exploit from the inside the corporate environment makes the firewall moot.  Having an outsourced partner that is more focused in the area of security, and that is also less susceptible to internal exploits (i.e. via employees, infected end-users, etc.) is actually safer than the notion of doing it “in-house”.  Just because one has physical “control”, doesn’t mean the infrastructure is safer.  

Creating truly secure environments, you see, is the ultimate dilemma - by making something more secure, you're simultaneously making that piece of information more difficult to access for the others that need it.  The ability to quickly service and respond to a client usually trumps the need for privacy.  We see that more and more as people start to employ popular applications like Dropbox and Evernote.  In this high security world we worry too much about guarding information from imagined threats and not enough about sharing it properly, securely and effectively.  Cywest Communications understands this and we're developing solutions that address the customer's need for security and ease of use specifically.  As Thomas Jefferson said, "I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty, than those attending too small a degree of it."

The Truth...

“His priority did not seem to be to teach them what he knew, but rather to impress upon them that nothing, not even knowledge, was foolproof.”

-J.K. Rowling – “Harry Potter & The Order Of The Phoenix"

It doesn’t take a boy wizard, or the rules of magic, to understand modern telecommunications although, sometimes, it sure feels like it might.  For an industry that’s generally resistant to change it’s amazing to see the evolution of telco and how it literally now shapes the day to day operations of businesses across the globe.  Companies want to enhance their telco infrastructures, and migrate to cloud based services, but most don’t know how.  What are the best practices and how can those steps be properly quantified?  Decision makers should look directly to the telco carriers for these answers.  Unfortunately, research surveys consistently show that business and non-business decision makers don’t trust the telco carriers to give them honest answers or the best prices.  That same group doesn’t view the carriers as thought leaders in their own industry either!  There’s a knowledge gap and it grows wider every day.

I started Cywest Communications to fill that gap and I’ve been doing it successfully for our clients for more than twenty years.  What I’m going to do here on this blog is share some of that experience with a broader audience.  Hopefully, I help you become better educated in this area, and lift up the curtain on some of the industry secrets that are often used to make customers enter deals that are against their best interest.

So, why should you listen to me – an older guy with a wife, three kids and a dog that has difficulty going to the bathroom?  Hopefully it’s because you’ll find these posts to be both informative and mildly entertaining, but also because I’m going to tell you the honest truth even when it's against my own self interest, just like I did about my dog.  There’s a lot of power in the word “truth” and it’s in rare supply given today’s fast paced world of bite-size information delivery. 

Truth has a way of coming to the surface despite efforts of repression or marketing.  The truth about telco, about cloud computing, connectivity and security are subjects I’m truly passionate about and look forward to sharing with you.  Talk to you soon.