Categories
Business engineering

Redundancies at Cable & Wireless / Thus

Sources inside Cable & Wireless/Thus say the company is wielding the axe before Christmas. It is a sad truth that many large companies do this at Christmas to clear the decks for their new financial year in April.

In actual fact this must have been only a matter of time following C&W’s recent acquisition of Thus. I don’t know how many individuals are affected but I daresay it will be in the press sooner rather than later. There is certainly no mention of it yet in the FT or The Register.

BT also seems to be making substantial cuts in headcount. These days being made redundant is not necessarily a reflection on the abilities of an individual. Large organisations often close down complete divisions.

It is said that during the dot com bubble burst in the early 2000s around a million people left the telecoms industry. I don’t believe we are in for the same wholesale exit this time round but only time will tell.

Categories
Business engineering

Redundancies at Cable & Wireless / Thus

Sources inside Cable & Wireless/Thus say the company is wielding the axe before Christmas. It is a sad truth that many large companies do this at Christmas to clear the decks for their new financial year in April.

In actual fact this must have been only a matter of time following C&W’s recent acquisition of Thus. I don’t know how many individuals are affected but I daresay it will be in the press sooner rather than later. There is certainly no mention of it yet in the FT or The Register.

BT also seems to be making substantial cuts in headcount. These days being made redundant is not necessarily a reflection on the abilities of an individual. Large organisations often close down complete divisions.

It is said that during the dot com bubble burst in the early 2000s around a million people left the telecoms industry. I don’t believe we are in for the same wholesale exit this time round but only time will tell.

Categories
Business engineering

NOC TLA

I spent the day at the Timico Network Operations Centre in Ipswich yesterday. It’s a great working environment with lots going on.

It isn’t somewhere that would suit all. You need to understand engineering speak to derive any benefit from the visit. Words of more than four letters are a rarity.

BGP, MPLS, TCP/IP, OSPF, Cisco, xDSL, Perl, L2TP, Linux, MySQL, SNMP, PHP, Exim, Apache, Debian, Bind.

If anyone reading can translate the above please get in touch because we are looking for more geeks engineers.

If you don’t understand what I am saying this is not for you. Please continue to the next post:-).

Categories
Business engineering

BT Wholesale Showcase at the Cabinet War Rooms

Went to the BT Wholesale Showcase at the Cabinet War Rooms in London yesterday afternoon. For those of you who don’t know this is the bunker where Winston Churchill and his government held court during times of danger in World War 2.

 

The room where the showcase was held was lined with a wall of original power control equipment. This mainly consisted of dials and levers and was a huge contrast to the technology in everyday use today. What is more astounding is the fact that I was born only 16 years after they stopped using the rooms. We have seen more technological progress in my one relatively short lifetime (so far) than in the rest of history. When I was growing up it was said that 95% of the physicists that ever lived were still alive.

 

As for the BT event it was somewhat crowded but it was good to see that they have an active programme to engage with their wholesale customers. It was also a great opportunity to network with industry peers. BT seems also to have a very competent and professional Sales Director in Karen Murray. It is often difficult to get things moving with an organisation the size of BT but they are responding to competition and saying the right things in the wholesale space.

Categories
Engineer engineering

Exciting times

I have just finished watching the most exciting tennis match I have ever seen. I’m not a huge tennis fan and don’t often watch the TV but the Nadal v Federer Wimbledon final of 2008 ranks as a classic and I’m exhausted now after sitting through it. The match was so long that the rain conveniently fell when the family evening meal came to the table thus letting me off the decision as to whether to keep the radio on whilst eating (it is bad enough having a TV – I wouldn’t dream of having one in the kitchen 🙂 ).

As an aside I do remember keeping the radio on when Europe was winning the Ryder Cup for the first time in decades. That was a no brainer and quite a long time ago now.

That wasn’t meant to be a poor attempt at a link to a technology related matter. It does however make me think that these times are the most exciting I have ever experienced in my various lives. In my home life the kids are at an exciting stage of the game. They are developing quickly and proving very demanding but also very rewarding.

At work Timico is a hugely exciting place to be. I honestly believe that the world of business communications is on the verge of enormous change. It still isn’t going to happen overnight but at least you can now see pieces of the jigsaw assembling on the table. I am not going to list all these pieces. You only have to read other blog entries on this website to understand where I am coming from.