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.
« February 2005 | | April 2005 »
The photograph above shows an open wire telephone line near Rio Vista, California. It has long since been pulled down. The insulators were only seven feet or so off the ground. Much of rural America was served like this, farmer built telephone lines made of baling like wire, with parts and instructions you could buy as a kit. Click here for a bigger picture (internal link) or go here (internal link) to understand more about outside plant.
I don't want to humiliate this company by saying who they are, but I am told they are a German firm who makes radios for Mercedes. This is the first page of a real, European Union approved patent. Click on the image for more:
After Nippon Telephone and Telegraph spent much effort to develop a new aerial cable an unusual enemy appeared:
"We discovered that a species of bird, the Spotted Woodpecker, liked to peck holes in the hard polyethylene sheathing. We have never figured out why the bird should do this, but it certainly seemed determined to peck its way through the plastic sheathing."
"At first we thought it was looking for insects, then perhaps it was using the cable to sharpen its beak; someone even joked that it was, literally, 'wiretapping.' Although we dedicated a good deal of research to this problem, we failed to come up with any convincing explanation for the bird's behavior."
"Many of our cables in mountainous Hokkaido and Nagano prefectures were continually damaged by this industrious bird. And once it had made one hole, it would not stop until it had riddled the cable with holes for hundreds of meters on either side."
"We tried setting up scarecrows and stringing piano wire above the cables to mate it more difficult for the birds to perch on them, but all our attempts failed. In the end we were reduced to installing special cables coated with an extra layer of protective steel."
Telecommunications: NTT's Vision of The Future, Yamaguchi, (1991) NTT Publishing Company, Tokyo, 94
Nokia sells a third of the world's phones. But what does their name mean? You get this trivia only at privateline.com:
"Emblem of the city of Nokia. The Nokia name comes from the river Nokia, which in turn apparently took its name from a dark, furry rodent called the nokia, (in English, the mustelid) a member of the weasel family." Nokia, The Inside Story Haikio (2002) Prentice Hall, London, 48
Tom:
Hello. My name is William Schwartz and I'm with the United States National Forest Service (external link). We're restoring an old forest station. I thought your readers might be interested in this project since the station acted as a communication link for a remote area north of Yellowstone Park. . . click here to continue reading --> (internal link)
2005: The 100th year of the United States National Forest Service
On January, 1969 the Bell System made commercial cellular radio operational. Aboard a train. Using payphones. Motorola built the radio gear which Western Electric designed and AT&T installed.
Retired AT&T employee John Winward was a lead person on the Metroliner installation, known by Bell as the "High Speed Train Project." He recounts for privateline.com many good details about the train and about early cellular development. Please click here to read his story. (internal link.) This is a rough draft, we may add more later.
Qualcomm has become the most influential wireless company in the world. Dave Mock (internal link) explains their history well in his new book, although I would have liked more about their chief engineers, like Phil Karn, who goes unmentioned. But the book is an excellent read with good reporting on the history of CDMA development in cellular radio. TDMA history is fairly easy to obtain, but spread spectrum history within cellular is little reported in hardcopy. Click here to go to Dave's page at privateline to read a chapter. (internal link)
The greatest factor limiting cellular radio development was not technology but spectrum, that great radio real estate space in the sky. Until the FCC assigned enough frequencies to handle large amounts of users there wasn't commercial interest. Who'd build a new, expensive system without enough customers to pay for it? Only when the FCC seemed willing to free up spectrum did the Bell System and Motorola put money and resources into fully investigating cellular. Can anyone think of another constructive invention that was limited chiefly by government regulation, not by the technology itself?
One more thought, since I am rambling. A one lane toll road cannot make as much money as a twenty-four lane toll road if there is constant demand for all those lanes. Compare that to the problem of limited spectrum or number of frequencies before the FCC allotted large blocks to cellular radio. One might argue that technology was still the limiting factor. If one could get 24 voice channels operating on a single frequency then limited spectrum wouldn't be the biggest problem. But technology has to be practical. Could you have a 24 lane toll road in the same space as a single lane? Perhaps. If you stacked each road on top of the other. But such a project would be cost prohibitive and impractical to construct. Again, we have to move away from technology and look at the limited resource that is spectrum.
I'm writing a mobile telephone history article for an international telephone publication. Please contact me if you worked in cellular for any of the above companies during the 60's, 70's, or 80's. I'd appreciate an e-mail interview and I'd be sure to credit you in the article. If you have experience in the pre-cellular era for those firms, well, I would especially like to hear from you. Thanks in advance.
Click here for more of the cover sheet