January 19, 2020
Happy New Decade!
As New Year’s day was approaching recently I watched the many messages, blogs and articles reflect on the passing of the old decade and dawn of the 2020s. Friends and family would post pictures of themselves 10 years ago and then opine on how things had improved or not, or pounds that had been found or lost, or whatever. Even my wife said something about not believing we were starting a new decade.
Up until then I really hadn’t given it too much thought.
I recently saw Woody Allen’s movie, “Midnight in Paris”, the story of one aspiring writer, Gil Pender, who board’s an antique limousine and is transformed every night to the Jazz Age’s icons of art and literature, including Ernest Hemingway, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, and Gertrude Stein. Gil believes that the 1920s avant-garde in Paris is the height of the age of letters and art, and he soon falls for Pablo Picasso’s lover, Adriana, who imagines: “I’m from the ’20s, and I’m telling you the golden age is la Belle Epoque;” and together they travel back for dinner at Maxime’s because to her, that was the best of times. But to Gil the Golden Age is not the 1890s, nor as he comes to figure out, not even the 1920s and he returns to his present.
I guess in some ways we are all like Gil – “Yeah, that’s what the present is. It’s a little unsatisfying because life’s a little unsatisfying.”
But then again maybe that’s also what drives us forward…
Q&A with the ITU
It is a sincere pleasure to be working once again with the International Telecoms Union and hearing from its Secretary General, Houlin Zhao, who has provided in this issue his interesting insight of where we are as an industry and our place in the world.
Porthcurno 150th Anniversary
SubTel Forum is publishing the second article of a series leading up to the main 150th anniversary of the first Transatlantic telegraph cable, which will be celebrated for the month of June 2020 at the Telegraph Museum Porthcurno in Cornwall, England. Stewart Ash has written a piece entitled, “In Search of Lost Robert Dudley Watercolours,” as well as highlighted the month-long schedule for the Porthcurno event.
Subscriber-based Market Sector Reporting
To meet the growing decisionmaker need to provide timely information about our increasingly changing industry, we have tweaked our reporting model going forward, offering a subscription-based service for all of the Market Sector Reports that are also being updated on a quarterly basis. Any or all reports are being offered on both an individual and enterprise basis at https://subtelforum.com/analytics.
New PTC Accredited Classes for the New Decade
Our friends at Pacific Telecommunications Council have been offering the PTC Academy to Pacific-based students for a number of years. SubTel Forum became IACET accredited last autumn, and working with qualified partners in providing CEU accredited education, which is sorely needed in our industry. This month we are announcing that SubTel Forum is working with PTC going forward in providing accreditation of future Academy classes, which we believe is a real game changer for the association and our industry at large going forward. Check out https://subtelforum.com/education.
Data Centers or Datacenters?
Excluding the Brit versus American orthographic differences, I’m still trying to get my head around whether we spell them data centers or datacenters. Fortunately, the boys in the backroom made the decision for me and thus the issue was rendered moot when they added a new layer to the SubTel Cable Map – some 1,700 DCs around the world at https://subtelforum.com/cablemap!
Where in the World are all Those Pesky Cableships?
Anyone who has read SubTel Forum long enough remembers a section we used to publish showing where various cableships had been in the then recent past. It allowed me to every issue ask: “Where in the world are all those pesky cableships?” Well ask no more because we have added a cableship layer to the SubTel Cable Map, which allows the intrepid reader to watch in real time the sharp end of our industry at work. And given that cableship positions are updated four times a day even the heartiest of aficionados should receive hours and hours of good fun at https://subtelforum.com/cablemap!
As always, we have some really excellent articles this issue from a number of international authors. Global Outlook is meant to be a wide-open theme and I think you’ll agree that our authors have certainly hit that mark.
Like many I am attending PTC ’20 in Honolulu. A lot has changed in our industry in the last twelve months. The sheer number of systems that are or have been built in the recent past is staggering. But the prior quick pace seems to be changing, and whether we are starting a new phase or not, I look forward like you to learning more.
So as always, should you be attending PTC ’20, please come to our SubTel Forum booth to say hello and of course, save me a seat at the Mai Tai Bar!
Good reading and let’s have an awesome ‘20s.
To read the rest of Issue #110 of SubTel Forum, please click here.
