Last Sunday morning, I was dealing with seasonal allergies. Nothing dramatic — just the usual springtime experience of feeling like nature has personally declared war on your sinuses. So before heading out for the morning, I grabbed an allergy pill from the medicine cabinet. Problem solved. Or so I thought. A little later, I arrived… Continue Reading
Articles
Schrödinger’s Chickens: The Silent Risk of Partial Network Failure
A few weeks ago Matthew (one of the senior engineers on our team) discovered that a fox had somehow gotten into his backyard chicken coop overnight. Chaos followed. The chickens scattered in every direction, and some vanished completely. A few cautiously returned later that day, another one came back the next morning, and then a… Continue Reading
The Bat in the Bedroom – and the Network Problems We Postpone
A few years ago, my wife and I woke up in the middle of the night to a sound that no homeowner wants to hear. Not a smoke alarm. Not a dripping pipe. Not even the classic “what was that noise” that turns out to be the cat. It was wings. We both sat up,… Continue Reading
2026 State of the Union for ILECs: Keep Voice Boring, Build Fiber Fast
Introduction If you run an ILEC, you’re living in two worlds at once. In one world, voice is still “the phone company”: customers expect dial tone reliability, regulators still care deeply about bad actors, and interconnect partners still behave like they’re one paperwork revision away from 1998. In the other world, your strategic oxygen is… Continue Reading
Reader Question: Will shocking SS7 prices drive people to the cloud?
A few days ago, I shared an article arguing that the cloud was great for UCaaS, but for traditional class 5 deployments, an on-site switch was generally a better option. One of our long-time readers wrote back to me with an interesting question (slightly edited for confidentiality): This is a great question, so I figured… Continue Reading
The FCC Suggests Removing TDM Tandems
At Award Consulting, part of our mission is to be your guide through the ever-evolving telecom landscape. While the issue we’re discussing today isn’t critical just yet, we believe it’s important to keep you in the loop – and we’ll continue to share updates about this issue as the situation evolves in the future. If… Continue Reading