Friday, August 13, 2010
Feeling My Age
Recently, we had an intern candidate in. Smart guy, graduated from one of the nation’s top liberal arts colleges. He had researched our firm thoroughly before contacting us about an opportunity to get in on the ground floor of our unique and growing business. Determined to learn more, he came by to talk telecom.
A chip off the Y generation, I suspect his context was the smartphone in his pocket, an unlimited data plan, and the coolest bandwidth-intensive apps this side of the Mississippi. He asked me pointedly, “So what do you think of the problems AT&T has had with their network and the iPhone dropping calls?” I started in on the whole data traffic explosion thing, using words like unprecedented, unabated and unprepared.
After he left my office, I had the sudden feeling that I’d lived this life before. It wasn’t until the next day listening to a new Droid radio commercial pushing high-def video, unlimited texting and hyper-fast this and that, that it struck me. New generation, same problem. Just bigger.
Remember the birth of client-server apps? The pinnacle of performance and productivity. That is until so many users tried to access them simultaneously, the volume of data requests clogged networks and brought servers to their knees. Frustrating and unproductive, there was nothing friendly about it. And how about the time when a 56K modem was considered a high-speed connection? The truth is that with each new era comes a quantum leap in technology that, frankly, makes you forget. If nothing else, it’s probably the most exciting time in the Telecom industry for a young intern – or anyone else.
