The telecoms network has high standards in terms of availability. For years we’ve talked about “five nines” reliability, meaning that service is available 99.999% of the time – equivalent to about 5 minutes of downtime per year. I wish my internet service was that good. The only way to attain such a high standard of… Continue Reading
Network Evolution
Cap-and-Grow or Rip-and-Replace?
My family recently moved house – for the first time in 8 years – and boy is it hard work. We only moved about a mile down the road, so the moving piece wasn’t so bad. It was the packing. And the unpacking. We’re still unpacking 3 months after we moved, and it’s amazing how… Continue Reading
FCC reduces compensation for toll-free calls
On October 7 the FCC released a new Report and Order about toll-free access charges, in response to concerns about arbitrage causing inefficiencies and excess costs in the system. I’ve written before about toll-free traffic pumping, which is one of the FCC’s concerns. They’re also seeing situations where calls are inefficiently routed from rural areas,… Continue Reading
Class 5 switch migration for dummies
A class 5 switch is a hugely important piece of network equipment – providing phone services, including 911 calls to thousands of homes, businesses, hospitals and governments. So any time you need to replace the switch – and migrate service to a new platform – you need to plan and execute the switch migration carefully… Continue Reading
Nationwide Number Portability – why should I care?
Local Number Portability (LNP) was mandated by Congress in the 1996 Telecommunications Act, and even though we’ve had 24 years to get used to the idea, LNP still creates many interesting challenges for those building switch translations. The idea of Nationwide Number Portability (NNP) has been around almost as long, but is gathering momentum, and… Continue Reading
Why is your DMS-100 still in service?
The Nortel DMS-100 was released in 1979. There aren’t many pieces of technology that are 41 years old and still in active service, and yet we regularly run into people who still have DMS-100s active in their network. And yet, very rarely do we find a telco with only a DMS-100. Most folks have purchased… Continue Reading