In article <telecom24.48.6@telecom-digest.org>, fatkinson@mishmash.com
says:
> Years ago, I was working for a company that had a radio transmitter on
> the top of a mountain somewhere in Hawaii. I never visited the site
> (or even the state), but we normally monitored and managed our sites
> by dialup lines.
> The unfortunate thing was that though there were a great number of
> radio transmitters on that mountain site, the local Telco had never
> run a cable up there.
> Not immediately knowing this fact, I called to find out what it was
> going to cost to have a line dropped on the site. I was quoted a
> price of ten thousand dollars just for the installation of a cable up
> to the site (they wanted us to incur the entire cost despite the fact
> that there were a large number of other companies needing phone lines
> to control their equipment).
> Of course, there was no way any manager at our company was going to
> sign off for that. So, we had to have our local people frequently
> stop by and check the site to make sure it was running in optimum
> condition. I had found a device that connected to a cell phone and
> provided an RJ-11 to plug a telephone device into. But, we decided
> that there would be so much intermodulation on that site that it
> wouldn't work effectively. And this was when cellular was still in
> its infancy.
> After several years on that site, telco decided that there was
> enough of a market there to make it profitable for them to provide a
> cable up the mountain. So we very quickly ordered a line on that
> cable (to keep a pair reserved for us as we figured those pairs would
> go fast). When they finally got it in, they divided the cost of
> installing the cable among everyone that got a line on that cable. I
> never saw the bill or was told what the numbers turned out to be. But
> I was told that what we actualy paid wasn't all that bad considering
> what all was involved.
> We had a similar problem in Puerto Rico. But as far as I know there
> was never a cable run up to that site.
> Sometimes patience pays off. Sometimes not.
Reminds me of another story. It wasn't that services weren't available
but just that the pricing was way out of whack.
We had to get our data services to an office campus building via a
Nynex T1 at the time. It was costing us on the order of $3000 a month
for that baby.
A local insurance company was abandoning their microwave system and we
were in the unique position to buy it for $20K and then hang a dish on
the sciences library tower and one on the building. This thing had the
same bandwidth as two T1's so we put all our voice services on it too.
So not only did Nynex lose the $3K a month for data, they also lost
about $1000+ for voice. So in essence that microwave setup paid for
itself in 6 months.
Tony P. (kd1s@nospamplease.cox.reallynospam.net)