Level 3 Communications Blog
Formally, I’m responsible for voice product global strategy here at Level 3. Informally, I’m that guy that runs the Friday donut club.
They say you learn everything you need to know in kindergarten. I have a confession to make: I never attended. As a result, I never learned the secret handshake or whatever else it is you kindergarten grads pick-up at those hallowed halls. Word has it that amongst these valuable life-skills, kindergarteners learn that sharing is [...]
Kodak’s bankruptcy got me thinking: In these final years of circuit-switched telephone service, are there some lessons we can learn from the world of film? What lessons can the world of photography hold for telephony? If you think about it, plain old telephone service (POTS as we acronym-obsessed telecom folk call it) is not all that [...]
Ask a teenager how long they’ve been dating and, chances are, the answer is just as likely to be denominated in days as it is to be in months (assuming they’re dating, that is). I should know. As the father of two teens I am mildly amused when I hear things like “I can’t be [...]
With 2012 quickly approaching, I figured I’d dust-off the old crystal ball and make a few predictions regarding the world of voice telephony over the coming year. 1. Mayan long-count calendar will be re-set to 2018 To the dismay of the hoards who had anticipated the final day next year (as preliminarily predicted by the Maya), [...]
Romance languages (Italian, French, Rumanian, Catalan and over thirty others) are somewhat similar. They all derive from Latin and this common origin means knowing one gives you a leg-up in learning another (or so they claim). Over the past month, I’ve been putting this hypothesis to the test, and while it would have been really [...]
The battle cry (or marketing pitch) of the Unified Communications charge typically goes something like this: “UC increases productivity (trust me), just let SIP Trunking savings fund the business case (productivity is an upside)”. Platform providers, systems integrators and carriers with low cannibalization exposure are all making similar claims. It seems everyone has an online ROI [...]
Last weekend, I helped a dear friend change a flat tire. Ninety five degree weather and a half-hour of fumbling to find the hoist shaft (which releases the spare from under the vehicle) conspired to turn a minor inconvenience into a major event. While I contemplated the irony (had this been my car it would [...]
On my last post, I listed some downsides encountered during my first week as a full-time UC user. Since then, the list has only grown by one (inadvertently hanging-up on folks by closing the conversation window…. oops!) On the other hand, I have also grown my appreciation for the subtle ways in which UC can [...]
It’s official. I cut the cord, threw away my desk phone and moved to a hosted unified communications client. The only vestige of a telephone in my workspace is a headset plugged into the USB port of my laptop computer and there’s no looking back. Wherever my laptop goes, my phone goes and working from [...]
Voice telephony has been around for a hundred years. Like nails scratching a chalkboard, these words tend to put my hair on end. While technically an understatement (voice telephony has actually been around for over a hundred and thirty years), this statement is also misleading. It implies there is nothing new or interesting about voice [...]
Keep in the Loop