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It was last year in Las Vegas just before Christmas. Of interest was that CES will do a separate show in China. Seems too many vendors get hassled trying to [...]

Last month, I mentioned it might be useful for Chuck to comment on the monthly Utah E911 meetings. Here are his comments: CHUCK McCOWN: I was naively surprised to find [...]

With the exception of five exchanges, Utah is a single LATA state. That fact tends to diminish objections by competitive toll carriers complaining about a study to consider making the [...]

Before divestiture we little guys gave Ma Bell all our toll revenue. She, in turn, doled it back to cover our toll expenses. That pool disbursed per Schedule A, B, [...]

In Utah, 67% of the land (mostly really rural) is owned by the U.S. government and administered by its Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Last year the local BLM honchos [...]

Last May 10th. Caught in bad weather. Found a long straight road. Landed. Don Hull came out. Helped turn the plane around and I moved it to park. We placed [...]

As a kid, I installed Motorola's tube two-way radios. How many of you remember that, when you pushed the 'transmit' button, nothing was said for the two or three seconds [...]

Got a message from the Number Portability guys. What a pain.... they zipped the MS Word doc, then renamed the file with a .lnp extension instead of a .zip (to [...]

Southern Bell Communications (SBC) has bought out what? Two or three other Bell operating companies? Today it looks like a reincarnation of Ma Bell. In a recent proceeding where a [...]

Last fall we erected and cut over a two hop microwave. Receive signal on one path was 30 db lower than calculated. The guys said they aimed the 6' dish [...]

There is substantial pressure from a variety of sources to get broadband to the home/office. Bell South, SBC and Verizon have common standards for broadband to the last mile. Orders [...]

Each month a freight company drops off a pile of 9-track magnetic tapes. Those same tapes you see spinning back and forth on the front of computers in old movies. [...]

It was 03 hundred Sunday when I called it a day. Sleep 9 a.m. Z, my three-year old, was being quiet. She wanted to see if I really was asleep. [...]

In October I mentioned that I'd discuss why, as a matter of trust, we telcos are granted a franchise. Alan Smith says that in what might be called, in 19th [...]

Remember back when all we had to do to coordinate one switch with another was voltage off and on to a relay? Then we switched to 2600kc tone, which sometimes [...]

There are as many opinions about the Worldcom/MCI meltdown as AT&T voiced against my Beehive Telephone Company a dozen years ago--when I decided my telco could not make it without [...]

I wasn't going to Atlanta for Supercomm. But at the last minute discovered that Delta Airline (DL) offered he same rate without a Saturday overnight. So--went from Salt Lake on [...]

Confusion and chaos have been used to enable folks--with zero investment in facilities-based switching assets--to obtain virtual office codes (VNXX).These are then used to avoid paying toll access charges via [...]

Don't say: Your call may be recorded because ... (Liar liar.) Or: ... your call is important to us (that's why we don't hire enough people to answer your important [...]

Toll carriers have been putting a lot of pressure on the FCC to mandate that terminating access charges be scrapped. The word from Washington suggests that a draft order dealing [...]

In its wisdom, Congress told us to allow competition. The FCC so ordered. State commissions concurred. Customers got to select who would complete 1+ dialed toll. I didn't have the [...]

The media has been discussing Utah's astronomical society's speculation on meteorite findings. Might they be found on the Great Salt Flats? Would the salt bed cushion a hot rock falling [...]

With more than four in 10 Americans working for the government, leaving just six of us to pay for those four as well as our own, I tend to be [...]

Some time ago, I mentioned that the last span of the 1914 transcontinental telephone line would not come down in my lifetime. Was not about to shell out 10 grand [...]

Just awarded a bid to do 1 million feet of cable in Utah's west desert. Labor came in at 50 cents a foot (three feet deep with a ribbon). The [...]

Ticaboo, Utah, was built some 16 years ago to house workers at a Utah uranium mine. The electrical distribution was laid three feet deep. One foot of dirt covered it, [...]

Last May Nevada Bell (owned by SBC) sent out an RFP. Did anyone want to buy a couple of its rural service areas with just more than 100 subs--centered on [...]

About three years back I had occasional hurts in my head. Pressure came and went. Doctors had no idea. Internet searches suggested symptoms were similar to meningitis. A CT scan [...]

A few years ago, my wife Rita was visiting her mom in Russia. Her friend Lida called me. They were planning a surprise party for Rita's birthday and might I [...]

Homeland security policy suggests not to place cable warning stakes over expensive or high-volume buried cable routes. The idea: Don't make it easier for the bad guys. Most have buried [...]

It's not a bucket truck. So what's the monster pipe attached to the hydraulic lift assembly? The tank holds 6 tons of -- water and dirt! City utilities know these [...]

The FCC is way out past the agriculture building. A near multilane freeway out front. Finding a taxi to get from is nearly impossible. 4:15 p.m. March 4. Russ and [...]

The Olympics closed the air space out 45 miles from Salt Lake. We chose to move our plane to a 2600-foot long graveled air strip at what Bureau of Land [...]

Qwest has an interesting concept of fraud control. If the carrier finds customers who call a carrier with access rates higher than what Qwest sells the minutes for -- it [...]

At the Broadband Summit in October in Washington I felt a seething coming on. No one had a clue as to how/where we should go. Many questions were asked and [...]

Alan Smith, Esq., had an occasion to call 911 from his home.Coming from a family where medical issues are discussed with at least one doctor at the table -- Alan [...]

Chuck McCown here -- Art is goofing off this month. I thought I'd take a shot at putting pen to paper and ruminate on broadband issues, life with Art, and [...]

It's really unsafe. Trying to push those tiny buttons on a cell handset while driving. The velocity of a car at 60 miles per hour is 88 feet per second. [...]

Private pilots enjoy two fun trips. The biggest is when thousands of airplanes descend each year on Oshkosh, Wis. The enthused devote most of a week looking at -- well [...]

On reading my reflection of a Utah PSC guy talking about flying with Art Brothers in that little plane with pliers holding the dash board, Dallas-based Conley Cathy took exception [...]

Over a year ago, Chuck and I made the trip to examine a new type of central office being crafted by a company in Richardson, Texas. A month ago, the [...]

Last October, I mentioned that if George W. Bush was elected president, telcos who require federal land rights of way could expect to see moderation of the hard line now [...]

There is (now) a 120-day window for processing applications for an antenna site on national park turf. Taking the baby steps to go through the process (for which administrative fees [...]

Citizens Telecom reports that they experience one cable cut in Utah each week of the year! Years ago, O'Dean Redman, of Albian Tel in Idaho, told me that one local [...]

My daughter Anastasia, 11, was leafing through an issue of America's Network, and said that she couldn't find my story. Watching her, I pointed out that it was because she [...]

I use solar to power a digital microwave relay at 10,400 feet on Bulldog Ridge in Utah's Henry Mountains. Two times, the system shut down when heavy snow caked the [...]

The major heavy bomber in Europe was the $250,000 Boeing B-17G. Four 1,850-hp supercharged engines. Ten man crew. The pilot was generally a captain. Co-pilot, navigator and bombardier were lieutenants. [...]

Chuck took the call from Bruce Hughes. Nice voice. Calm. Said he 'just bought 30 acres which did not show a recorded easement for the 1,200 feet of fiber' we [...]

When George Bush gets the nod on November 6, good things for rural telcos will -- in time -- happen. Why? Well, cause VP candidate Cheney is from Wyoming. He [...]

Park Valley is home to some 50 farm families. Some retired. Their water comes off the east/west mountain range dividing northern Utah from Idaho. About 50 kids attend the school [...]