5G roadblock: labor

Mon Jan 6 22:14:39 UTC 2020

On 6/Jan/20 23:32, Michael Thomas wrote:

> Or not. It has always amazed me at how backward the bay area is wrt
> networking. The only one installing ftth in San Francisco is a small
> company called Sonic (that I'm aware of). And it's taking them years
> and years and years. The local telco's don't seem to be in any hurry,
> and the cable folks don't seem to have much motivation.

As an old boss used to tell me, "Mark, it's not a problem; it's an
opportunity."

> It sounds like your kids would take extreme exception to it not being
> a basic service. :)

We've taught our kids some manners, but it's not uncommon for their
visitors to arrive at ours and without greeting, the first thing they
utter is, "What's the wi-fi password?"

>
> Seriously though, does anybody even remember how we used to figure
> stuff out anymore before the internet?

My neighbor's wife (then about 25 years my senior) and I were
responsible for the various VHS movies our respective homes watched
throughout each weekend - including any messages my folks wanted passed
to her and her husband when they couldn't be asked to stand up and
rotary-dial each other on the landline.

It was a nice little 5-minute trek behind the lawns that connected 3
separate houses across some 100m of nature. The good ol' days.

>
> It's rather ironic that one of the hardest technical problems that
> carriers solved was handoffs. I was involved with trying to do the
> same thing over IP instead of L2 and I can tell you that it gives a
> huge amount of appreciation for what those folks pulled off in the
> '70's. But now it's not a very big deal. It's kind of niche need. A
> useful niche and glad to have, but it probably would not have been
> engineered if we had high speed internet then.

My Swedish friend and I are constantly arguing about IP vs. TDM; strict
rules vs. flexible innovation. Even though he does really appreciate
having a regular laugh with his girlfriend 6,000km away with no fuss,
via video, on his laptop :-).

Mark.