He had it made until he shot off his mouth.

Early in my Telecoms career, there was occasionally lots of overtime. I worked in a dial-for-dial cutover crew turning up new 1AESS switches in the PSTN and there were times when you could pick up some extra money by working more. Union rules required time and a half pay and even double time pay for …

Are you responding to Latency slowly?

Reduced latency is one of the key benefits often cited for 5G. Improved latency allows for new apps, new use cases, new revenue streams. But I have so many questions. For 5G latency to be clearly better, we have to know what it’s better than. Do you know the typical latency in your network now? …

2G Network Decommissioning, Ready?

The idea of 2G Network decommissioning is hot right now.  Many operators still operate 2G networks.  They’re wondering when is the right time to turn it off.  I want to use this article to share my experience.  I did a 2G Network Decommissioning analysis for an operator awhile back.  It is a complex topic, with a …

Cool is an Expensive Word for Engineers

Not long ago I made a video about Excel-based reporting. You can read it or just watch the video. The best part, the sexy “Only 3-steps required to update the dashboard”, starts at 5:00, and the updated report is shown at 06:15.  This is a data-rich, comprehensive report, I call it a Dashboard, and once …

Stop Monthly Reporting Madness

Is this you? Every month you scramble madly to produce your standard reports.  There’s so much to do: data collection; the tedious and error-prone poking data into specific cells; tweak the charts to include the new data; check that none of those awful “#####” errors display; then hurry up, Boss wants the reports by the …