Private Line covers what has occurred, is occurring, and will ocurr in telecommunications. Since communication technology constantly changes, you can expect new content posted regularly.
Consider this site an authoritative resource. Its moderators have successful careers in the telecommunications industry. Utilize the content and send comments. As a site about communicating, conversation is encouraged.
Thomas Farely
Tom has produced privateline.com since 1995. He is now a freelance technology writer who contributes regularly to the site.
His knowledge of telecommunications has served, most notably, the American Heritage Invention and Technology Magazine and The History Channel.
His interview on Alexander Graham Bell will air on the History Channel the end of 2006.
Ken Schmidt
Ken is a licensed attorney who has worked in the tower industry for seven years. He has managed the development of broadcast towers nationwide and developed and built cell towers.
He has been quoted in newspapers and magazines on issues regarding cell towers and has spoke at industry and non-industry conferences on cell tower related issues.
He is recognized as an expert on cell tower leases and due diligence processes for tower acquisitions.
ABCNews reports that guns made to look like cell phones are now being produced. Lucrezia Cuen in London reports this new development is being tracked most closely in Europe. The United States Customs' Service says that hitting the 5, 6, 7 and 8 buttons on the phone will fire four .22- caliber rounds in quick succession. Here's the URL for the report:
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/DailyNews/phone001205.html (link now dead)
Ken Solomon relates, "As far as I know DC was used to prevent hum, and to allow service to continue in the event of a power outage and because people were afraid of AC. It is used, after all, in the electric chair. Also, Bell used wet cells and probably would have killed himself using an AC generator. And, even though AC would have induced hum the interference and cross talk using DC was terrible anyway until a two-wire loops were introduced."
"In the early days iron wires were used and they were strung from roof top to roof top (this is pre poles). Since iron is a fairly poor conductor it picked all kinds of squawks, screeches, buzzing, parts of conversations (from adjacent lines) and other noises. Also, a single strand grounded wire will act as an antenna picking up atmospheric noises as well. Later, pure copper was used but it proved too soft so they used iron coated with copper which worked much better since it had many times the conductivity of iron alone. Of course if you hook up two modern phones in your house with modern conductors and a solid power supply you shouldn't have any interference. But plug in some cheap intercoms and you'll pick up (or induce) noise. BTW, did you know that the best place to ground the phones was in the soft earth surrounding the outhouse?"
"You're right about Edison who was a strange bird. He hires Tesla to improve his AC generation and products and then dumps him (without given him credit) when he accomplished all he was asked and more. I think Edison's problem was that he didn't understand AC as well as DC and was more comfortable with DC circuits."
At least twenty to thirty different antennas dot the top of the ridge on Mount Vaca. Amateur radio groups, the United States government, and many, many commercial communications companies all maintain equipment on this high ground. The locals call the ridge "Top of The World" and while it is not, is a grand place to be. The following pictures are from this site:
http://www.armymars.org/norcal/vaca.html
(No longer working!)
The hazy photograph immediately below is looking east toward the great central valley of
California. And West Sacramento, where I live. On a clear day the Sierra Nevada would be visible beyond.
While working on the new site, I've been considering the differences between the word communications and telecommunications or telecom. Since voice and data are converging communications might seem the best choice to describe traffic and activity in our new, networked world. The prefix 'tele' suggests telephony, traditionally a voice and not information dominated medium. But 'tele', from the Greek for far off, is the only way to suggest communications from a distance.
Among dozens of other words with the same prefix, teleconferencing, telemetry, teletype, telemarketer, and even telekinesis, it is automatically implied that parties or equipment are distant from each other, the critical difference between local and distant communications. The words conferencing or marketer without 'tele' make it seem these folks are standing next to us, and not at the end of a telephone line. So telecommunications still has its place, indeed, it might seem preferable since telecom can never be confused with the much broader field of communications, which includes courses in the humanities. You've probably heard of a communications major, a liberal arts pursuit which deals with oral, written, and visual communication. But not electrical communications, there's the difference. Rather than being outdated, I think telecom still serves and serves well.
I have always liked this AT&T ad from 1969. Looking back, it tells us much about what was to come:
"Could you tell us, Mr. Isomura, what you like best about the States?"
'The inventiveness of your people, instant coffee, and your telephone system.'
"We asked Mr. K. Isomura, president of Panasonic, Matsushita Electric Corporation of America, about his first impressions of this country . . . continues here with a much larger picture
The similarity is that all modern radio-telephone service is, for the most part, cellular radio. A base station and an antenna provides coverage within a small geographical area called a cell. Networking many of those stations, called cell sites, allows roaming between the individual cells. This wireless wide area network lets a carrier provide coverage to a city or a town. Cooperative agreements with other carriers allow people to roam outside their normal coverage area. Most notably, cellular employs frequency reuse. The same set of frequencies are used over and over within a given area, to make the most economical use of the radio spectrum. No matter how the radio works, be it PCS or conventional cellular, no matter the enabling transmission technology, say TDMA or CDMA, it is all cellular radio, since distributed cell sites, employing frequency reuse, make up a wireless network.
(Just go here and it will all be explained :-) Cellular telephone basics)
PCS generally refers to cellular radio at higher frequencies. PCS is "all digital" compared to conventional cellular which is a hybrid of analog and digital routines. Being purely digital, though, is not necessarily a good thing. Quite often the all digital services lack coverage since more base stations are required. Audio quality can suffer terribly, with analog still superior. As wireless evolves the different services may operate on high and low frequencies as needed, thus blurring the defining lines between the technologies.
AT&T's IS-136 service, for example, an all digital evolution of conventional cellular, can operate on high and low frequency radio bands as needed. Depending on what the local carrier offers, it even changes its operating method, dropping back to analog cellular service where digital service isn't provided. Thus, IS-136 provides many "PCS like" services where it can, and in areas where it can't, it at least lets you talk and complete calls. I am a fan of this system.
GSM or PCS, besides being all digital, and designed in Europe with no thought of being compatible with conventional cellular systems, does differ from standard cellular in the way it makes and sends calls. The difference is in the thousands of details. But in the end it is all cellular radio.
There are no dumb questions at TelecomWriting.com, only opportunities to look into ideas and terms. Got this question yesterday:
Q: What is the program that a cell phone uses? And where can I get a copy ?
A: Well, actually, you can't because there isn't any. The cell phone is like a dumb computer terminal, with no intelligence built in. The exceptions are PCS and GSM phones which have SIM cards, you know, a memory module that contains some information. But that information is about the subscriber and the carrier, it's not a set of operating instructions. The cell phone instead is controlled by the nearest base station which a mobile switch supervises. That mobile switch in turn relies on network resources: landline telephone switches, carrier servers, and databases in many locations. So there isn't a cell phone program.
An Ontario reader has sent in a photograph of a mystery phone for us all to try to identify. In the above photographs you can see the guts of the phone and the outside of the case as well. Normally the bells are set on the outside as you can see by the small photograph of the Western Electric Company 1020B model. Our reader's telephone is possibly a field model, judging by the leather handle. The transmitter or receiver, possibly a candlestick, would have been connected by the wires shown. This allowed the bulky part of the phone to remain off the desktop. But if it is a field telephone then there would have been just a simple handset, not one with a base. I do not know, but if you do then give me an e-mail.
But you were wrong. Good grief!:
Robot Turns Sewers into Broadband Commodity
"Stream Intelligent Networks Corp. has developed a sewer robot, known as STAR (Sewer Telecommunications Access by Robot). The robot navigates through sewer systems and lays fibre-optic cables without the need for road lane closures as in traditional cable installation methods that involve digging."