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Network Evolution

Cap-and-Grow or Rip-and-Replace?

March 26, 2021 By Andrew

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

October 29, 2020 By Andrew

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

July 8, 2020 By Andrew

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?

May 12, 2020 By Andrew

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?

April 21, 2020 By Andrew

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

New tandem trunks: how to migrate smoothly

March 2, 2020 By Andrew

New tandem trunks: how to migrate smoothly

We’ve worked with a few clients recently who needed to migrate to a new trunk group for their tandem traffic. Sometimes this is driven by the tandem provider – perhaps they’re simply updating their transport infrastructure and need you to use a new set of trunks, but nothing is really changing except the transport. In… Continue Reading

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