Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Telecom & IT....the North vs. the South...

A friend of mine asked me a few weeks ago why I hadn't been posting any new blogs. The answer came to me fairly quickly...."I don't feel like I've got anything to really offer readers that hasn't already been said somewhere else". Well after a short discussion and some questions from his side about some telecom information I began to realize that there is actually plenty I can give to readers. Most is likely out there somewhere but hopefully I can give a side to it that perhaps will help people.

I have a unique presence in today's telecom and IT world. I literally work in both of these worlds on an every day basis. I don't necessarily believe I'm an expert in either field but I do believe that I have a moderately strong amount of knowledge. I've been working with computers in some sort of way since the late 1980's and in 2000 I started working for a wireless internet provider. In 2003 I moved on to a CLEC where I was lucky enough to be trained in the world of Bell Standards by some really great old Ma Bell techs. Over the years I've taken that training they provided and applied it to different positions I've held from being a field tech, to a lead trouble screener, and now to an engineering position.

Even though with SIP, IP-PBX's, etc the IT and Telecom fields have been merged together for quite some time I've come to see that there is still a thin gap. A North vs. South so to say. Many times I will hear fellow telecom workers tell me "well you can tell that system was designed by a computer guy". And then I've heard the other side as well. Problem is that many times though both sides are trying to accomplish the same thing there is still a cultural gab between the two that sometimes creates issues in how things should really work.

Now with many IT administrators in today's world also being requested to take care of telecom equipment things just get that much more complicated.

So.....the point going forward on my front. I am going to try and get a post out weekly that has to do with things that I believe are necessary to be known both on a telecommunications side of things and the IT as well. Things going from simple cabling guidelines to deeper explanations of things like QoS on data networks and how they apply to voice IP networks.

I don't have a full schedule of things I'm going to get posted but I'd love to hear any feed back you the readers have on this subject and even better things that maybe you'd like to have addressed. I know I don't have a large amount of readers at this point but please...pass the word along if you know someone in a situation where maybe they've been thrown telecom equipment they have to figure out or maybe are just looking for some general information and I'll do what I can to assist in answering any questions you all have.

Plus I'm going to work on getting a couple of past Bell technicians to possibly write up some small blogs to help get some of their infinite knowledge out on the web.

4 comments:

  1. I rememebr having to go into a wireing closset and pulling every wire out of a rack because the phone company can and dropped the Cat 5. They left about a foot of wire bare at each end and straightend out the twistes. This caused some isues with bandwidth. But you can't blame them, phone wire is more forgiving than networking, and at the time, cat 5 was new so they probably didn't know the difference. Not sure what phone people say about computer people, but it would be interesting to hear from them, maybe learn something.

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  2. It can really be surprising the # of telecom techs that aren't really up to speed when it comes to data applications....that being said it is a # the is dwindling. I know at least where I'm at that most techs are familiar with data specs in regards to cabling.

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  3. Sounds like a good idea toward bringing these two together. Here are some topics I would like to see covered.
    1. Negotiating Telecom Contracts
    2. Understanding PRI's etc (versus data t1 etc) and how they interface into the IT departments routers and equipment.
    3. Troubleshooting Links that are down - Looping the Interfaces etc. Determining what to look for in the logs. How to determine what side of a point to point link the problem is at.
    4. Converged Voice/Data MPLS / Drawings and Diagrams of a placed VOIP call etc.

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  4. i have bit of confusion which is faster the telecom or IT presently i am working an telecom industry as system admin,but i want to switch in IT field, but i am totally confused,should i do it or not,suggest me
    whats your opinion about this

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