ANNIVERSARY
Dear Wayne,
THE MORE THINGS REMAIN, THE MORE THEY CHANGE THE SAME
to undertake I wish to thank you for the opportunity ror twenty-one the painful task of looking in the mir ve been as an years later and assessing where we’ I approach this industry and what might lie ahead. you did when with at least as much trepidation as KMI FiberopI invited you to speak at the inaugural New York (it tic Undersea Systems Symposium in years ago (1994, “happened at the Hilton”!) some 28 at all the you’re welcome!) Can’t understand wh gratulations on F.U.S.S. was about… In any case, con 21 years of SubTel Forum! B/r, —Tom
INTRO – WHAT IS AND WASN’T THEN
A • • • •
h, those heady – and at the same time, scary – times! What amazes me is not so much how things have changed, but how much they’ve stayed the same – only even more so. But change is all about perspective, isn’t it? Just a couple of data points to set the scene – in 2001… Google was a mere toddler of 3 years old (how did it ever survive the dot.com bust?) Facebook was still 3 years in the future yet (much less Meta) Skype was 4 years in the future – VOIP was still a relatively low-quality alternative to telco “pin drop quality” voice service Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) – as in Amazon Web Service – was still 5 years in the future
But the beginnings of the end of the arguably stodgy, under-innovative and expensive (read: “highly profitable”) telco-dominated communications business model were already well afoot. Private investors stepped into the market (boy, did they ever!) to rapidly fund and construct cable networks to
36 SUBMARINE TELECOMS MAGAZINE
BY TOM SOJA
meet and anticipate surging demand. Growth in data traffic had already begun to surpass voice (ask your grandma about 64-kbps (not a typo) voice circuits and erlangs!)
MEA CULPA
From time to time, clients have asked about the accuracy of our forecasts. In the early days, the answer was, “It’s still too early to tell”. These days, the answer is more clear. Now we know for sure that forecasts from back then were – and I’m increasingly confident that those of today too are – all wrong. And on the low side. My excuse well-reasoned explanation, is that the future apps and uses that will continue to drive demand haven’t yet been invented and therefore it remains beyond human capability to predict, much less convince someone else to believe, how big they could possibly get or how fast. Fundamentally, the submarine telecom cable industry is about supplying physical infrastructure to create and support virtual services that transport bits & bytes over that infrastructure (storing and sometimes processing those bits & bytes in data centers and such along the way.) Is there a limit? Given that bits and bytes largely represent human imagination for creating and sharing thoughts, emotions, connections, creative expression – and sometimes truly useful information – it’s hard to posit any real limit, especially if the resources available for their generation are relatively inexpensive, or even free.
ON THE POSITIVE SIDE
There are a few things that stand out to me that have stood the test of time (at least so far.) “…greater number of choices for device types, e.g., telephone, computer, pager, PDA, web phone, wireless devices and other non-PC devices.” • We’ve not yet begun to see the impacts and possibilities that 5G (and 6G, etc. after that) will bring • Granted that every phone today incorporates all of the functions previously embedded in separate devices mentioned above, and then some (compasses, tape measures, video cams, thermometers, wallets, translators…just to name a few)