Business and Social Frog Soup – are we ready for the next decade?

December 31, 2009 Leave a comment

Over the past couple years I have written several stories with “frog soup” as a main theme. The idea of being in cold water, and not recognizing the degree by degree Frog soup concerns for the American economyincrease of heat in the water, till at some point we are cooked, is the danger of being a cold-blooded animal. Business may follow a similar course.

In business we can follow the route of “this is the way we’ve always done it, and it works, so there is no reason to change our processes or strategies.” Innovations like virtualization or cloud computing hit the headlines, and many say “it is a cool idea, but we want the security and hands-on confidence of running our own servers and applications.”

In the United States many telecom companies continue to build business cases based on “milking” telephone settlement minutes, bilateral relationships, and controlling telecom “pipes.” Internet service providers (ISPs) continue holding on to traditional peering relationships, holding out for “paid peering,” doing everything possible to attain market advantage based on traffic ratios.

Nothing new, same ideas, different decade.

It is international frog soup.

In Vietnam the government is currently planning to build an entirely new information infrastructure, from the ground up, based on the most cutting edge telecom and data/content infrastructure. Children in Hanoi go to school at 7 a.m., take a quick lunch break, hit the books till around 5 p.m., take another break, and finish their day at study sessions till around 9 p.m.

Concentration – mathematics, physics, and language.

The children are being exposed to Internet-based technologies, combining their tacit experience and knowledge of global interconnected people with a high degree of academic sophistication.

In the United States children go to school for, at most, 6 hours a day, graduating with (on average) little capabilities in math or language – although we do have deep knowledge of metal detectors and how to smoke cigarettes in the restrooms without being caught. In Los Angeles, some locations cannot even hit a 50% graduation rate among high school students.

And oddly enough, we appear to be comfortable with that statistic.

Perhaps our approach to business is following a similar pattern. We become used to approaching our industry, jobs, and relationships on a level of survival, rather than innovation. We may not in some cases even have the intellectual tools to apply existing technology to the potential of functioning in a global economy. Then we are surprised when an immigrant takes our job or business.

Some universities, such as Stanford, aggressively recruit students from foreign countries, as they cannot attract enough qualified student s from the United States to meet their desired academic threshold. And once they graduate from Stanford, they find their way into Silicon Valley startups, with an entrepreneurial spirit that is beyond the scope of many American graduates.

Those startups have the intellectual and entrepreneurial tools to compete in a global economy, using innovative thinking, unbound by traditional processes and relationships, and are driving the center of what used to be America’s center of the global innovation world. Except that it is only based in Silicon Valley, and now represents the center of a global innovative community. Possibly due to the availability of increasingly cheaper American labor?

Frog Soup

Us Americans – we are getting lazy. Innovation to us may mean how we manipulate paper, and has nothing to do with manufacturing and business innovation. We are starting to miss the value of new products, new concepts, and execution of business plans which end up in production of goods for export and domestic use. We believe concentration on services industries will drive our economy into the future, based on products and other commercial goods imported into our country.

Except for the painful fact and reality we do not have a young generation with the intellectual tools to compete with kids in Hanoi who are on a near religious quest to learn.

The temperature is rising, and we as a country and economic factor in the global community is being diluted every day.

Time to put away the video games and get back to work. No more “time outs,” only time to roll up our sleeves and learn, innovate, learn, innovate, and innovate some more. Forget comfort, we are nearly soup.

Filed under Entrepreneurs, International ICT, Internet and Telecom, LA Life, Social Issues, Social Networking, Virtualization Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

Copenhagen Climate Summit Ends – What Did They Accomplish?

December 21, 2009 Leave a comment

“The Heads of State, Heads of Government, Ministers, and other heads of delegation present at the United Nations Climate Change Conference 2009 in Copenhagen,… Have agreed on this Copenhagen Accord which is operational immediately.” And so ends the Copenhagen Climate Summit.

Long Beach port and oil island - major source of pollution for LA BasinBut what did the participants agree to? Was it substantial enough to make a difference? Did they silence the skeptics? Will Sarah Palin finally believe Alaska is melting into the North Pacific?

German Chancellor Angela Merkel defends the Copenhagen climate summit. In an interview with the German news source Bild am Sonntag Merkel stated “Copenhagen is a first step toward a new world climate order – no more, but also no less. Anyone who just badmouths Copenhagen now is engaging in the business of those who are applying the brakes rather than moving forward.”

The climate conference ended Saturday with 192 participating nations walking away with the “Copenhagen Accord,” a deal brokered between China, South Africa, India, Brazil and the US.

The “Accord” can really be brought into one statement:

To achieve the ultimate objective of the Convention to stabilize greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system, we shall, recognizing the scientific view that the increase in global temperature should be below 2 degrees Celsius, on the basis of equity and in the context of sustainable development, enhance our long-term cooperative action to combat climate change.

How the global community gets to that objective resulted in a non-binding acknowledgement that doesn’t set hard numbers on reducing carbon emissions, specific timelines, or penalties on violators.

It does agree to provide $30bn in funding for poor countries to the “adverse effects of climate change and the potential impacts of response measures” from next year (2010) to 2012, and $100bn a year after 2020.

The “Accord” not cites carbon emissions as an issue, but also deforestation.

We recognize the crucial role of reducing emission from deforestation and forest degradation and the need to enhance removals of greenhouse gas emission by forests and agree on the need to provide positive incentives to such actions through the immediate establishment of a mechanism including REDD-plus, to enable the mobilization of financial resources from developed countries.

Oddly, or maybe not, China (as the world’s largest source of carbon emissions and greenhouse gas) applauded the “Accord.” Maybe the “non-binding” nature of the “Accord” gave China some relief, or maybe China has simply accepted their role and responsibility in providing global leadership in reducing harmful toxins into our environment.

Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi of China believes the Copenhagen Summit produced “significant and positive” results. “Developing and developed countries are very different in their historical emissions responsibilities and current emissions levels, and in their basic national characteristics and development stages,” Yang said in a statement. “Therefore, they should shoulder different responsibilities and obligations in fighting climate change.” (Xinhua)

President Barack Obama stated “a meaningful and unprecedented breakthrough” was made in Copenhagen. “All major economies have come together to accept their responsibility to take action to confront the threat of climate change.” (from Press Conference in Copenhagen)

But there are skeptics

No event is perfect. When you get representatives from 192 nations in a room, teamwork is probably a fantasy none of us should harbor. A small island nation may wish to defend their island from rising oceans, where an oil-producing country may want to defend their industry.

Communist and socialist countries may have an agenda, religious leaders an agenda, democracies an agenda, and superpowers an agenda. So as expected, not everybody walked away from the conference with warm words for the “Accord.”

  • Venezuala – International thought leader Hugo Chavez stated “If it’s to go and waste time, it’s better I don’t go,” he said. “If everything is already cooked up by the big [nations], then forget it.”
  • Bolivia – Bolivian President Evo Morales called for the creation of an actual climate justice tribunal. The Global North, Morales said, should indemnify poor nations for the ravages of climate change.
  • Ethiopia – Director General of the Ethiopian Environment Protection Agency, Dr Tewolde Birhan Gebre-Egziabher
    beleives Africa is already suffering, and likely to suffer more from climate change, but contributes very little to climate change.
  • Nepal – Prime Minister Madhav Kumar highlighted his concern of the “seriousness of the problem of climate change” particularly for the least developed and vulnerable countries. He adds that Nepal urges special focus on the impact of global warming on the Himalayas, in Nepal and elsewhere.
  • UK – Ed Miliband, the climate change secretary, said “If leading countries hold out against something like ‘legally binding’ or against the 2050 target of 50 per cent reductions in carbon emissions – which was held out against by countries like China – you are not going to get the agreement you want.” (COPS15 )

And so on.

The important thing to remember…

The important thing to remember is that we, as a planet, were able to get 192 nations together to agree on one important point – climate change is occurring, and human bei9ngs are part of the problem. If we do not get control over global warming, our planet will not be able to support life in the longer term.

Every media source in the world focused attention on the issue for the better part of two weeks. Even Fox News, acrimonious as they are, provided a lot of coverage. Regardless of polls stating the roller-coaster of public opinion on global warming vs. job loss, 90% or more of the global population will now at least look at a bus spewing black clouds of exhaust into the air, deforestation, and thousands of 2-stroke motor scooters crowding streets as something that is not healthy for the planet.

Regardless of which side of the debate you fall, the result is your position will now need defense – defense that it is not destructive to the planet, defense a Hummer/2 used to buy beer in a West Virginia country town is your inherent right as an American, or defense that every energy-related decision should include an environmental impact question.

Prior articles in this series:

Filed under Energy, environment, Internet and Telecom, Long Beach, Social Issues Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Understanding Global Carrier Ethernet with Mark Fishburn at CENX

November 30, 2009 Leave a comment

I first met Mark Fishburn at the Convergence Technology Council (CTC) in Calabasas, California. Mark was a director in the organization, and had very strong ideas about networking and Ethernet. Going beyond the standard role we all play at professional networking venues, he distinguished himself from the group by presenting a passion for teaching others, and presenting his ideas in language nearly anybody could easily understand. Mark was always easy to find at CTC meetings, as he was the center of the largest groups of people who wanted to hear what he had to say.

Mark is a true innovator, and generates a lot of inspiration among CTC members with his visions and thought leadership in a variety of technology and business-related topics. I met Mark in Tarzana, California, to learn more about his vision related to Carrier Ethernet, as well as to gather some advice for entrepreneurs.

Pacific-Tier: Mark, tell us a little about yourself. How did you come to the San Fernando Valley, and what do you do?

Mark Fishburn CENXMark Fishburn: I worked at US companies for many years when I was in London, and one day I said I could fix a (problem) in the US headquarters, and they said “OK.” So I came across as a corporate officer in a company called Retix. I worked with them for a while, and then started my own company.

So that was my business, a software company, and then back into data communications, and worked for a company called NetCom Systems, which then became a company called Spirent.

Pacific-Tier: You’ve been involved with the Metro Ethernet Forum for quite some time. What interested you about the MEF?

Mark Fishburn: Well it actually goes back some time to my interest in Ethernet, and the world of Ethernet from the very early days. in 1982 I installed my first Ethernet system while working for Xerox, and that was in Paris. it was one of the very first Ethernet installations.

And as a result of that I gathered a great interest in Ethernet. In the old times, working for an Ethernet test-equipment company, we put out on e of the first fiber Ethernet products, and a few years later one of the first copper Gigabit Ethernet products.

And so it went on. I was intimately involved as chairman with the 10 Gigabit Ethernet Alliance, and the Gigabit Ethernet Alliance before that. It became apparent this was all triggered by the definition of fiber Ethernet. It really reached out beyond the boundaries of local area networks to the metro network.

That really paved the way for Ethernet services to be provided by service providers, and not just live inside the LAN. That was really the initial foundation of the Metro Ethernet Forum/MEF.

It was all about, really advancing the adoption of optical-based fiber Ethernet.

Pacific-Tier: I guess that brings us up to your current venture, which is CENX. Can you tell us anything about CENX?

Mark Fishburn: Sure, let me just give you a bit of background, because it is all really very connected.

In the substantiation of the MEF it became clear there were many different technologies that were or could be connected together using the Ethernet as a ghost in the machine.

And thus were born Ethernet services. And in 2004 carrier Ethernet was created and defined by the MEF by providing ubiquitous services worldwide independent of the service providers providing them, and also the equipment it is connected on.

And that really led to development of the need to have global connections between the service providers who are providing these Ethernet carrier services.

Although I say that in a sentence, it actually took about eight years to transpire and it led to a business that in 2009 has become about a $20 million global services revenue.

At this point in time, as these networks have grown, there is a requirement to connect more of them together in a way which preserves the differentiation of the service providers and creates a global (Ethernet) interconnectivity.

That really led to the formation of our company CENX (Carrier Ethernet Neutral Exchange) which was established to created, effectively a service-level interconnect between the service providers worldwide, and negate the enormous cost and pain in making those connections possible.

Pacific-Tier: Excellent. It’s kind of a sketchy economic environment, a tough time for businesses. What drove you to start a new business in this tough economy?

Mark Fishburn: Well, there are some areas that grow in spite of the economic downturn. The areas that grow are those that potentially save cost, or those that are pushing the envelope and generating more revenue.

Carrier Ethernet is such an animal. It (the industry) grew somewhere around 33% last year in America alone. So while the economy is growing people look for significantly more economic ways to effectively use the same old applications, while paving the way for new applications data driving mobile technology.

So, in this economy to do that was both a natural, and almost necessary step to advance this industry. And as such it was pretty natural for those people who realize this to be attracted to our company, to invest in it, and to meet that need.

Just like anything else, if you have a sufficiently difficult problem, and there is a need to solve it, it save money, and helps make money for people, and makes their job easier, then it’s a very compelling case.

Pacific-Tier: You’ve been a director with the Convergence Technology Council of California/CTC here in the San Fernando Valley (Los Angeles) providing thought leadership and help to a lot of people who are members. What advice do you have for people who may be having trouble with their jobs, been laid off, or are young graduates getting ready to enter the workforce – is there hope for entrepreneurs and those getting ready to jump into the technology industry?

Mark Fishburn: I would say absolutely. I think this is a great time to start a new venture. If you look at every great new venture, this has been repeated many times. In all the great companies that were founded – they weren’t founded when the economy was good, they were founded when there were significant problems that gave people an opportunity to really look at the idea that necessity is the mother of invention.

It’s like anything else, there are tremendous opportunities, still driven by technology, or different social climates driving the way people communicate now, rather than the way they did before. So within technology is really an unlimited opportunity for people to look at an issue, or to realize their dream and go for it.

Pacific-Tier: Young people today, they have technology diffused into their education, and into their childhood and youth at a rate that we never had in our middle-aged years. How do you feel about the youth today? Are they going to be able to take this thing that we’ve built and make it better?

Mark Fishburn: I kind of look at it a little differently. I think in a way they are driving it. Because if you look at somebody who is multi-tasking, if you look at the corporate world of maybe a couple years ago, well when you were at work you were at work. When you went home you played.

It’s become so blurred that the distinction between work, collecting information, entertainment, and communications, it is going to happen in a way that is connected 24 hours, and I think that young people today are living in the world of communications – in a way that they communicate with each other, in a way they focus, in a way that they are constantly multi-tasking and moving towards whatever is the next and most convenient way to gather.

So I believe that the youth of today is programmed into this multi-processing environment that they have, and that it’s way (young) people operate, doing multiple things at the same time, is the way of the future, and I believe that people who have been brought up in the world with mobile technology and communications, texting and talking, thinking and playing – all of those at the same time. I think all of those things are the wave of the future.

I think entrepreneurs who connect to that will do well.

Pacific-Tier: That’s very encouring. Thank you today for your counsel, great advice, stories, and great talk!

Mark Fishburn: Sure – can I add one more thing?

Pacific-Tier: Of course!

Mark Fishburn: I would say that one of the things that really led me to doing this was the realization that a lot of people would fear to go into something new like this, or to start a new job. But the alternative is unpalatable. Surviving until you die is no way forward. And I believe that if you are passionate about something that you really have nothing to lose by trying it out.

If you don’t do that, you might regret it forever. So I would say, just go for it.

You can contact Mark at mark@cenx.com

Mark Fishburn, Vice President of Marketing, has more than 35 years experience in marketing, sales, product marketing, systems engineering, and management in the computer and communications industries.
He has been closely associated with Ethernet for most of his career, installing his first system in 1982 while at Xerox, co-authors of the initial Ethernet specification. Industry roles include Chairman of the Board, Metro Ethernet Forum, Chairman of the Board of the 10 Gigabit Ethernet Alliance, and board member of the Gigabit Ethernet alliance and he has been instrumental of the creation of the MEF’s Carrier Ethernet and Global Interconnect strategies.
Prior to joining CENX Mr. Fishburn was President of strategic marketing company MarketWord, in the Carrier Ethernet market. He spent 10 years as VP Technical Strategy and VP Marketing for network test company Spirent Communications, and UK Managing Director and officer for Retix. He won more than 20 industry awards and studied BSc. Special Mathematics at University of London.

Check out the entire Pacific-Tier Communications Innovators and Entrepreneur Series

Filed under Entrepreneurs, International ICT, Internet and Telecom, LA Life, startup business Tagged with , , , , ,

Navigating the Telecom Supply Chain with Matt Hiles at Mosaic Networx

November 26, 2009 Leave a comment

I first met Matt Hiles while he was director of business development with Looking Glass Networks in Los Angeles. As a customer looking for telecom services, navigating the providers, technologies, and deal structures can be confusing. Matt took the time to explain all aspects of the business, cost structures, and how he would get us a great deal – while still making money for his company. Matt stood out alone from a world of “wheeling and dealing” telecom sales people, unique in providing the customer a level of confidence they were getting the best product, for the best price, with the best service.

Pacific-Tier: Today we have Matt Hiles, managing partner with Mosaic Networx. Hello Matt! So tell us a little about yourself, how did you get into this business?

Matt Hiles: I started in telecommunications right out of college, and I’ve been in the business, in one form or another, since – which is about 20 years. I’ve been in a variety of telecommunications, voice, and service providers. I’ve also spent a period of time in the data center side of the industry as well.

Pacific-Tier: now you are with Mosaic Networx. Can you give a little background on Mosaic. What are you, what do you do, and what type of business problems do you solve?

Matt Hiles: Mosaic Networx is a carrier neutral, data services provider. We provide a supply chain management service primarily for enterprise companies, but secondarily to wholesale providers and telecommunications providers. From a supply chain management perspective we provide a value add in three functional areas which are pricing, procurement, and provisioning.

What we’ve found is that, in the enterprise space, there is a lack, or need in one of those areas. Typically all of those areas. Where enterprise decision-makers and IT managers don’t have the depth and breadth of knowledge of the telecommunications providers and options that are available.

So we price them, then procure them, provision them, and then manage them ongoing on the back end.

Pacific-Tier: Well, that’s pretty cool. So who is your market, who would be your customer?

Matt Hiles: Our customers are small, medium, and we even have several Fortune 500 companies. We have a strong vertical in the financial services market. Specifically we work with the low-latency, high frequency trading guys. We’ve also worked with public wholesale companies who may not have the buying power we have, so we add some pricing value for those types.

Pacific-Tier: I’ve noticed you are based in Long Beach, California. Other people in your company are scattered around the United States, with diverse locations for your primary management team – does that provide you any challenges?

Matt Hiles: I imagine it provides some challenge, although It would be hard to quantify them. We haven’t really seen them. I think where we’ve done an outstanding job in is finding the right people.

We have 18 personnel in the functional areas in the company, whether its finance or operations, or on the sales side as well. So the distributed environment that we have seems to work out just fine.

Would we have a little bit more camaraderie in a common office? Probably.

Pacific-Tier: So it’s rather tough economic time right now. We’ve had kind of a sketchy run over the last year. What motivated you to start up a company in the last year or so and how do you feel about being an entrepreneur in a tough economic environment?

Matt Hiles: So, I suppose that timings everything, right? We didn’t know we would start a company in a tough economic period. But, the economy notwithstanding , I think there is always business. And for innovative entrepreneurs who can go out and create value for customers, provide them an outstanding customer experience, then good or bad times I think you can be successful.

Pacific-Tier: So what advice do you have for other entrepreneurs, graduates who are looking at a tough economy, what advice do you have for other budding visionaries and entrepreneurs?

Matt Hiles: I think you have to have an expertise. It doesn’t make a lot of sense in my mind to venture into an area as an entrepreneur where you don’t have years of background and can consider yourself a subject-matter expert. I think that is (not being a subject-matter expert) a recipe for disappointment.

But somebody who has spent their time in a corporate environment, learning an area, and then able to translate that into, you know, a startup environment, then I’d encourage them to be entrepreneurs, and entrepreneur owners.

Pacific-Tier: That’s great advice. Give a little pitch for you company. Where do we find you?

Matt Hiles: You can find our company at Mosaic Networx, and the domain is mosaicnetworx.com . if you would like to reach us we’d be happy to hear from you.

Pacific-Tier: Thank you very much for the time!

Matt Hiles is Managing Partner and Executive Vice President of Mosaic NetworX, LLC.  Prior to joining Mosaic NetworX, LLC in early 2008, Mr. Hiles was the Director of Business Development at Looking Glass Networks responsible for both Enterprise and Wholesale revenues.  He was also instrumental in the creation and development of asset-based, network infrastructure projects around the country.  Mr. Hiles has an established record of success within the telecommunications and data center industries spanning nearly 20 years.  During his career, he has held executive and leadership positions at Allnet Communications, MFS, WorldCom, Level 3, and DCI Technology Holdings.Matt attended Harvard University in Cambridge, MA, where he earned an ALB degree in Government – US/Soviet Relations.

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A Catalyst for Entrepreneurs in Santa Barbara

November 11, 2009 3 Comments

Catalyst for ThoughtOver the past couple of years we have visited small business and entrepreneur support organizations in LA (the Convergence Technology Council/CTC), OCTANe in Orange County, the San Diego Software Industry Council/SDSIC in San Diego, and the Silicon Valley Product Management Association (SVPMA). Last night I visited the Catalyst for Thought group in Santa Barbara, and attended their November program “Building a Thriving Business: How to avoid the common pitfalls.“

CATALYST MISSION: An official event and lecture series promoting entrepreneurship, financial literacy, and philanthropy for entrepreneurs and professionals.

  • Invest In Yourself: Get educated and motivated through dynamic speakers and connected with valuable networking opportunities
  • Invest In your Community: Net proceeds from Catalyst event ticket sales benefit non-profits

The guest lecturer Tuesday evening (10 Nov 2009), Ms. Susan Urquhart-Brown, is a private consultant from Oakland offering individual coaching for entrepreneurs. She is a former columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, and author of the book “The Accidental Entrepreneur: 50 Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me About Starting a Business.”

Catalyst for Thought’s meeting drew a very large crowd, with standing room only along the walls. Most of the attendees were either recent graduates of Santa Barbara-area universities and business colleges, with a smaller number of business people from small local companies. All were very excited about the possibility of either starting or expanding their own businesses, and paid close attention to all parts of Susan’s lecture.

CATALYST OBJECTIVES

  • Bring together, and foster, a community of entrepreneurs and professionals.
  • Promote entrepreneurship and ethical business practices, as a way to improve the individual, and the community.
  • Motivate the individual to act on ideas.
  • Equip the entrepreneur with the resources and contacts to be successful.
  • Raise awareness about the current needs in the community, and extend financial support to benefiting non-profits.

CATALYST VISION: Advance the community, by motivating individuals to create, develop and act on his or her entrepreneurial ideas.

The event format was much like a university lecture, with a 30 minute presentation followed by a 30 minute question and answer period with the audience. The main themes presented in Ms. Urguhart-Brown’s lecture were:

  • Plan and stay accountable: Learn to leverage your expertise and uniqueness, setting goals that propel business forward almost magically!
  • Don’t be a “lone wolf:” Learn the essentials of asking for help, monitoring growth, and getting access to advice at critical stages.
  • Listen and understand your customers: Learn to listen, offering benefits and solutions.
  • Know where your business is headed: Learn how to keep your eye on the bottom line, so that effective changes can be made to keep your business on track

The Entrepreneurial “Buzz” in Santa Barbara

Santa Barbara is almost too nice of a city for people to work and live. Not surprising that some of the most dynamic companies in the tech industry are launching from Santa Barbara, including world class, innovative cloud computing companies Rightscale and Eucalyptus. The academic leadership at the University of California at Santa Barbara and the Santa Barbara Community College/SBCC are fully engaged with not only their students, but also the community in promoting both education and providing small business development resources.

Melissa Crawford, director of the The Scheinfeld Center at SBCC met attendees of the Catalyst event at the door, both welcoming each person, as well as trying to get to know the entrepreneurial experience and spirit of as many people time allowed. If she is an indication of the support students and others in Santa Barbara can expect, then Santa Barbara will continue to attract and retain the best in both Southern California, and other distant locations the buzz extends.

The Scheinfeld Center is a “nexus for entrepreneurship education on the South Coast and is responsible for education and training, and the cultivation and dissemination of new technologies and business models for the 21st Century entrepreneur.”

Having attended many networking and educational events in California and Virginia over the past year, it is clear Santa Barbara brings business entrepreneur enthusiasm to a new level. It was an exciting evening, and reluctantly I left while the informal networking was still in session to make the long drive home to Long Beach.

John Savageau, Long Beach

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Wiring Los Angeles Part 4 – WilCon’s Path to the Future

November 9, 2009 Leave a comment

This is the fourth article in a series of interviews with Eric Bender, President of Wilshire Connection (WilCon), the largest independent telecom carrier in Los Angeles. In this segment Eric discusses the future of WilCon, including expansion outside of Los Angeles, wireless topics, relations with local utilities, and some great examples of WilCon’s flexibility in delivering telecom solutions to the LA community.

Pacific Tier: Outside of downtown LA , what is your expansion strategy for going to place like El Segundo, Las Vegas, or other cities, parts of the city?

Conduits Inside a Street VaultEric Bender: We’ve leased dark fiber from other carriers to get to other off-net locations such as El Segundo. We connect Equinix on Maple, so we can do lit transport into that facility. We’re working on a plan that would extend from there to the 365 Main location in El Segundo, and then with a second route back to downtown.

We’ve acquired several 10Gbps wavelengths from LA to Las Vegas, and into the Switch NAP facilities, so we can connect with all their switches and facilities, including the Super NAP, which is a 400,000sqft monster of a data center facility. So we do just backhaul or transport to Vegas. We’ve got approximately 10 gigs of traffic back and forth between here and there now.

I don’t see us building on a long haul type arrangement where we would build far outside of downtown LA. We’ll go off-net by structuring deals with existing customers and partners that we have to get fiber and connectivity into other locations. One of the things we are working on is connecting our buildings in LA to Phoenix, there’s a couple of different data centers in Phoenix – there is I/O, (etc).

Then we might go from Phoenix to Las Vegas, and from Las Vegas we already have to LA (which we already have), but also Las Vegas to San Jose/Santa Clara, and then back down to LA. So we basically have a ring from LA to Phoenix, to Las Vegas, San Jose, back to LA.

Pacific Tier: So would you have arrangements with Edison (Southern California Edison), or Burbank Power, or people like that to extend into Hollywood or Burbank or Glendale?

Eric Bender: Well, we do work with Edison and DWP (Los Angeles Department of Water and Power), and have used them to get to further out locations from downtown. The city of Burbank, we’ve not been successful and have not really chased hard to try and make a deal with them. Our initial efforts to work with them were rebuffed without comment – they had no interest in working with us, which surprised me.

I think we can be creative in building, like at 900 N. Alameda which we now have connected with dark fiber, and there is a variety of ways we can do that. We have connection and interconnection agreements AT&T to use their infrastructure so we can theoretically deploy assets throughout the city and state in coordination with AT&T’s network.

Pacific Tier: Would you consider for example going to San Diego using a capacity swap with Edison where they gave you a pair of fibers to San Diego?

Eric Bender: We do that already, well not to San Diego, but we have done a variety of barters, trades, or however you want to call it, with companies like Edison. With Equinix, with DWP I’d like to – but they have no interest and can’t by law (they are a public utility), and can’t really do that. Level 3, we’ve had discussions with them to do the same thing.

Because I’ve got all this infrastructure, whether it’s the conduit, or the fiber, and it’s all there, it’s paid for, there’s no debt, there’s no cost of capital to me – it’s there, so if I need to allocate a couple pairs of fiber going here or there on my network, and I can get something that I can generate revenue off of on somebody else’s network – we’ve done that many, many times and it’s worked out very well with a variety of companies.

Pacific Tier: Expanding a bit more on WilCon’s flexibility…

Eric Bender: We have no rigidity with anything we do. I think that one of the reasons we’ve been successful, and have continued to grow every month, basically where we’ve continued to grow over the previous month is because we’re not rigid and have a straight line approach to things.

Servicing WilCon's ConduitI think the advantage of not being a telecom guy by trade or training and education is that we look at things by how do we get the customers the things they need? When a customer needs something my first response is to say “OK,” and the second response is to call my technical guys and say “I just committed us to doing this by a certain point in time, make it happen.” And they do.

We’re a small company so we don’t have all the various layers of engineering groups and planning groups to say from here it has to pass from point “A,” to point “B,” to point “C,” before you can be told it can be done, or not be done, or how to do it. We just make it happen and get it done.

The story I tell that kind of tied the real estate to the telecom all together well for me is at one of our buildings, 700 Wilshire we had a t4enant in the building. This goes back to about early 1999. We had put conduit in the ground already, so it was probably early 1999, had already connected the conduit to One Wilshire, as well as 700 (Wilshire Blvd), and we had leased space to this tenant.

Part of their requirement was they needed a couple of DS3s between the meet me room at One Wilshire and their premises they had leased at 700. At that point we were only doing conduit deals with our carrier customers. They were going to Level 3 for this DS3, and Level 3 hadn’t really built out their network yet. Because we put Level 3′s first conduit in the ground in LA (it was conduit we’d installed in our trench and gave them, basically), and Level 3 was provisioning this DS3 through PacBell (now AT&T) or someone, and they were re-provisioning (the DS3) through them.

The timing for the tenant was going to be 90 days, or 120 days wait for the tenant to provision this DS3. The tenant came to us and knew we had started Wilshire Connection. So they came to us and said “we really need this, is there anything you can do for us?”

I didn’t know what to do, I mean we just had conduit between the buildings. So the customer said “all you have to do is this. We have the equipment, you’ve got fiber cable already (because we’d already deployed that), you need this piece of equipment, you’ve got this box on this end, that box on that end, and we’ll tell you how to do it and what works well.”

Two weeks later we had that DS3 traffic up and running between the buildings. So we got into the transport business. But that was because we were flexible, somebody needed something, (we had the resources), and we got it done.

If we can see there’s a reasonable return on investment and payback on the infrastructure or cost to deploy new equipment, we’ll do it. We got all this MRV DWDM equipment (dense wave division multiplexing) because we had a very limited amount of fiber into the (particular) building, so the only way I could provision this service (lit bandwidth) was with the DWDM gear – so we went out and bought it.

So the equipment was paid for within a year. The customers can come and go – it doesn’t really make any difference (other than we want to keep customers), because it is already paid for. So we’ll continue to do that, and that’s how we’ve continued to grow into the buildings that we have, as well as the transport circuits that we do between all these buildings, as well as connecting into Vegas, and the same to Phoenix, Santa Clara, and other cities.

Pacific Tier: So what is the future of WilCon, where do you go from what you have today?

Eric Bender: several years ago we had some strategy discussions, and (since) we are a dominant carrier in LA, we’re known around the world as the provider of choice, the connector of choice here in LA. We have a great relationship with Equinix, and CoreSite now (CRG), so we get a lot of referral business from those guys. We’ve provided such good service to our customers that big carriers such as TATA, PCCW, and others that they just come straight to us when they have new requirements.

So we had this discussion “let’s go and expand, and into other markets” and we took a very quick and dirty analysis and determined that it costs so much to build out and deploy in these other markets, and we know other companies have been doing similar kinds of things, and we might be providing a similar type of service. In order to do that (expanding into other markets) we’d have to take on an additional equity investor, or venture funding, and then all we’re doing is servicing somebody else’s debt.

So, does that make sense (expanding) or should we continue to be the provider here, and continue to grow which has made us a profitable company. So we said “we are gong to do that, and we’ll expand and provide services outside of LA in various ways that make sense, and does not require a huge capital outlay, and we’ll do some – but we’re not going to spend millions of dollars to deploy.”

The reason many companies went bankrupt was because they built these massive networks, and there was no r4evenue to service the debt on them.

So our future is to grow in selected and strategic ways. It will probably be between LA and other cities by usi9ng lit waves, and then establishing a POP (point of presence) in a couple buildings, and then maybe in some cases building a bit in those markets to connect those buildings.

In Dallas we’ve looked at buying an existing network, but there’s really no need to connect between those facilities – there’s no business with that. Chicago was no different. San Francisco, San Jose, Santa Clara are all so spread out its hard to justify a new build or new construction.

I think working with companies like Allied Fiber which is building their long haul network, and working with them to be the local metro piece to what they’re selling to their customers on the long haul – we can tag along with them, working well with them in LA, and possibly duplicate that with them in other markets.

Pacific Tier: Is there any wireless in WilCon’s future?

Eric Bender: I don’t really see that. We did look at partnering with some wireless, WiMAX, or other guys using Terrabeam or some of these free space optics. It seemed like they just had such a long way to go before it would make it worthwhile, and that in LA maybe it’s a problem. Trying to negotiate the line of sight, and rooftop antenna rights and those things,… that we didn’t really get anywhere. It became cost prohibitive I think.

So it would be nice to do something like that. We looked at that (wireless) to support NANOG (North American network Operator’s group) several years ago when they were here. We were in Library Tower (the US Bank Building) on the 56th floor. I had a line of sight directly from my window to the hotel, but it was too far. We would have needed a couple of hops to be able to deliver a gig (Gigabit connection), and it was a disaster for them to have it there (at that hotel).

They had to go buy a DS3 from AT&T (PacBell). If they had done the conference downtown I could have connected them with no issues.

Pacific Tier: Any final words you would like to say to the global telecom or Internet community, or Los Angeles? Why LA, or with WilCon, downtown LA is an attractive place to do business?

Eric Bender: We’re number one!

I think LA is a great place to do business. From a location perspective its perfect, as its the gateway to the US. You can get anywhere from LA, whether its physical transportation, or from a telecom infrastructure perspective. I think if you come to LA as a carrier, as a provider, as a bandwidth user, in this industry – and you’re going to locate in one of the half a dozen facilities (in downtown LA), whether an Equinix, Level 3′s gateway, One Wilshire, or TELX Carrier center.

Any of the main big facilities here (and Switch and Data) you are going to need, ultimately, to connect to customers that are in one of the other facilities – somehow you’re going to find us. You may be referred to us, do your research – ultimately you are going to find we can provide that connectivity.

We are really easy to do business with, as any of our customers will tell you. And I think that in all the years we’ve been in business, since 1998, I think there are maybe two deals we’ve lost because of price, that we were not the lower cost provider for that particular deal. And, we try to provision within 24~48 hours (of an order).

Pacific Tier: That is outstanding. Words for the global telecom and internet community from Eric Bender, President of Wilshire Connection. Thank you very much.

John Savageau for Pacific Tier Communications, Long Beach

====

This concludes our interview with Eric Bender, President of Wilshire Connection in Los Angeles.  you can contact Eric at ebender@wilcon.com for more information on Wilshire Connection.

The entire interview is available online.

Previous entries in this series include:

  • Part 1 – Wiring Los Angeles, an Interview with Eric Bender, President of Wilshire Connection
  • Part 2 – WilCon Takes to the Streets
  • Part 3 – WilCon Manages Infrastructure Risks

Filed under Burbank, Internet and Telecom, LA Life Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Wiring Los Angeles Part 3 – WilCon Manages Infrastructure Risks

November 9, 2009 Leave a comment

This is part three is a series of interviews with Eric Bender, president of Wilshire Connection. Wilshire Connection, or WilCon, is the largest independent local network and neutral fiber infrastructure provider in downtown Los Angeles. In this segment Eric discusses how WilCon managed risk to their network during the initial construction process, the continuing management of critical telecommunications infrastructure, and the role WilCon could play in the event of a major incident impacting the telecom industry in Los Angeles.

Pacific Tier: (on the topic of utility gas and electricity) What risk is there to the infrastructure in downtown LA of an explosion from either electricity or gas, and what would that do to your conduits if it occurred?

Eric Bender: Interesting question… I haven’t really thought much about that, it would, depending on where, you never want to see that. Fortunately with power, Street Utility Tagging in Downtown Los Angelesthe lines typically won’t explode, it is the transformers, which mostly are in the buildings.

The way LADWP (Los Angeles Dept of Water and Power) sets up they bring the high voltage lines into the building, so if the transformer blows up it will be in the building. The transformer is typically not out in the street – but they do have some vaults out in the street, and they have had some explosions, but they have been contained within the vault. We don’t run through any of their vaults so from that perspective we’re OK.

Somebody who is digging and hits a gas line… that’s a different story.

I can say in the roughly 12 years that we’ve had conduit in the ground, and since we were one of the first to dig, I can say that we are lower in the ground, and more protected in many respects, and more of a straight line in routes we’re going without having to jog around any other existing infrastructure that came later.

But we’ve never had one of our conduits damaged or cut. Or interfered with…

The difference between how our conduits or duct banks are typically done vs. many other carriers is that we put in massive amounts of conduit. We use (typically) four inch PVC conduit, and I don’t think we have a single one (trench) which has less than six or eight four inch conduits. Most of them have multiples of that, for example going on Wilshire Blvd between Grand and Figueroa we have an average of conduit in that whole duct bank is probably close to sixty four inch conduits.

Because fifty of them go into One Wilshire, although they kind of peel off in WilCon Conduit Duct Bank in Los Angelesdifferent directions from there, we’ve also got a main ’48 and they lateral off down into other streets into buildings, so there’s some doubling going on.

But in some areas we have up to sixty four inch conduits so that’s the size of a desk, or bigger, and that duct bank is encased in a concrete slurry around it, surrounded by a couple addition feet of dirt and asphalt on top.

So if anybody digging is going to hit (the duct bank) typically there is warning tape on top of the conduit, concrete, or in the concrete they are going to pull it up. They are going to hit (the tape) or something before they hit the conduit. So unless it is some young, uncontrollable (person) with the backhoe who is on a rampage – no matter what you do you can’t control that.

NOTE: Whenever a company opens a street for utility construction or maintenance you will normally have construction observers and safety observers from not only the company opening the street, but also each company with conduit or utility infrastructure in the immediate area of digging.

But some of the other carriers that put in one or two conduits, they are the ones at risk, like for example an MCI, Verizon, or a QWEST in some cases they typically put in just the two conduits… And you could rip through that even if its encased in concrete before you realize what you are doing.

The conduits are just this big, versus this big (Eric shows a note book size to represent two conduits vs. his desktop to represent WilCon’s conduits).

Pacific Tier: Do you consider yourself the only truly neutral facilities-based carrier in downtown LA?

Eric Bender: I think others consider themselves neutral, but they have other motives as well. I don’t care if I sell dark fiber or lit transport. We can do either, and it doesn’t matter to me which one they want. We have so much fiber, and the infrastructure to continue pulling more and more fiber that I’m never worried about running out of capacity for dark fiber.

A Level 3, or a QWEST, or an XO, they run a network, and they’re obviously not neutral. DWP (LADWP), they’re somewhat neutral because they don’t seem to care whether you take fiber or lit services. I don’t know what they do with lit services or on the network side of things – honestly. We’ve leased from them (LADWP) dark fiber to get access to some off-net buildings, and they’re very easy to work with. They are very rigid, and have no flexibility (LADWP is a public utility), but they’re easy to work with.

We’re probably, as a straight, neutral, not really care who you connect with, we may not be the only one (neutral fiber network), but one of the only ones that would be neutral.

Pacific Tier: One Wilshire is traditionally a center of communications in Los Angeles. Some people think it is a high risk location because there is so much on the 4th floor and other parts of the building. Some people think that it is meaningless – that it doesn’t have that much value. Do you think the 4th floor of One Wilshire today is a critical piece of infrastructure, or do you think it is something that is just there, that could be bypassed when and if ever needed?

Eric Bender: I think at this point it would still be considered a critical facility. A lot of carriers and other companies have facilities or locations elsewhere, but because of the way they’ve built their networks from the beginning, One Wilshire has always been the central point for them.

They may not have grown and expanded there, or they may have moved things off to other locations, such as 600 W. 7th, 818 (W. 7th ), or even outside of LA, and use a company like us, or some other carrier to make that interconnection or virtual connection between their two facilities. One Wilshire tends to have been their primary facility.

I think that over the years that’s more applicable to legacy carriers, the bigger carriers, the ones that have been around for a long time.

I think the Internet type of carrier that’s either VoIP or an Internet company, content CDNs (content delivery networks), and those – One Wilshire’s not as important to them at all because in my limited technical knowledge it is easier to reroute that traffic to other servers – they have more mirror facilities than a switch would have on the telecom side of things.

Pacific Tier: Is there a business continuity plan, or disaster plan, in the event One Wilshire or another facility like 60 Hudson (New York), or the NAP of the Americas (Miami) anybody has thought about or put on the shelf in the event one of those critical facilities has a catastrophic failure?

Eric Bender: I am not aware of any common, for the greater good, where all the carriers have participated in developing that, or working out some kind of contingency plan. That’s actually a really good question.

You’d think that after 9/11 where the infrastructure was so significantly damaged that in various other markets such as LA, Chicago, that there would be some kind of a group of organizational effort to have dealt with that. I am not aware of one. They may have one, but I am not aware of it, and they never invited me to participate.

Pacific Tier: Is WilCon positioned, in the case of a worst case scenario in Los Angeles, to assist the community and assist the industry in recovering to an alternate facility if that occurred?

Eric Bender: Sure, I mean, our infrastructure that we built, and that we control and own, is all primarily downtown LA, so… in a worst case One Wilshire becomes untenable, well a lot of our fiber doesn’t all home run into One Wilshire, but a lot of it does go in and turn around, coming back out again.

There would be disruption, but it could be brought out and bypassed. We have diverse paths into most buildings that we connect so we can certainly do it.

Not in LA, but when in the Mediterranean last year when they had the three or four cuts, (several of) our customers were impacted. I sent them an email and said I doubt there is anything we can do here , but if there is anything you need that we can help you with, let me know and we can work with you.

And actually two of the customers said “yeah we need to reroute some connections to put it on a different side of their ring (in the Med and Pacific) that we could do in about five hours with a couple pairs of fiber for them, and they were able to reroute their traffic, or some of their traffic, and lessen the impact of those (submarine fiber) cuts.

Pacific Tier: So WilCon would consider yourselves a very flexible, agile part of a recovery plan, and would not be rigid in your provisioning process, and that you would work with the community to recover from a disaster?

Eric Bender: I agree with that!

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This ends the third segment of this series. In the next part, Eric will discuss more of the future of Wilshire Connection, including his visions for expanding WilCon into new markets.

The entire interview is available online.

Previous entries in this series include:

  • Part 1 – Wiring Los Angeles, an Interview with Eric Bender, President of Wilshire Connection
  • Part 2 – Wiring Los Angeles Part 3 – WilCon Manages Infrastructure Risks

Filed under Internet and Telecom, LA Life Tagged with , , , , ,

Wiring Los Angeles Part 2 – WilCon Takes to the Streets

November 8, 2009 Leave a comment

This is the second part of an interview with Eric Bender, President of Wilshire Connection. In this segment Eric talks about the period in 2000 preceding the Democratic Nation Convention, and the aggressive industry build out of conduit, fiber, and telecommunications infrastructure in the downtown Los Angeles area.

Pacific Tier: At what point do you think the city of Los Angeles figured out this would be a really good thing for LA, and it would bring more business and money into downtown?

Eric Bender: I don’t think they ever came to that conclusion. What happened was in 2000 the Democratic Convention was going to be down at the Staples Center in downtown, so I think it was in early 2000 or at the very end of 1999 the city called a meeting and notified all the telecom carrier that had been active or Eric Bender President Wilshire Connectionbuilding or doing things that as a part of the preparations for the convention that they would be repaving the streets, resurfacing certain streets, and there was going to be an absolute five year moratorium on any digging or street construction work as a result of this. They wanted the streets to look pretty on TV, and that was fine.

So I don’t think they thought about how much money, or how beneficial the telecom network was going to be to the city, they realized they would need to do something for this convention. The result of that was that it threw somewhat of a panic into the carriers that were in the infancy of building out their networks, and building throughout LA, and it forced a massive infrastructure improvement project, because there was a very limited amount of time before the city was going to shut everything down.

I think the convention was in July or August, and by the end of May everything had to be done. So, we really had about four or five months to build everything and our network probably tripled in size during that period of time. We were one of the only companies that had an active permit that we had pulled for a small segment that we were building that hadn’t started construction yet because it was not that critical to us at the time.

But because of us having an active permit for about a two block, few hundred feet, maybe five or six hundred feet of conduit the city realized they had a major problem that these companies had to be building, had to be constructing – they couldn’t just shut them down for five years. The city did understand that was a problem.

So they said you can build, we will expedite and streamline the process and anyone who has an active permit, well everyone can tag along with that permit. We’ll just change it and build out from there.

So, with our little permit, and the little segment, I think it was on Grand from Wilshire down to 7th St., and then a little bit more. We basically parlayed that and built it up to 5th St., then up to Figueroa, and literally tripled our network. So we became the lead builder from that permit on a tremendous amount of other conduit that was built in the city.

Basically they couldn’t keep up with all the activity because there were intersections in downtown LA where there were three backhoes digging for three separate projects. We were doing one, QWEST was doing their own, they didn’t really want to participate much with anyone, and MCI, MFS didn’t want to share conduit so they were doing little things.

And I remember at 7th and Grand there were three different construction crews and project going on at the same time, and for me it was just a wonderful time because we had this permit, so we had a lot of leeway, and I would walk the streets, stand on the street corner, and these other companies, you know Level 3 and QWEST actually did participate, XO… You know I would say “we’re going down this street to this building,” and they’re going “I’m going that way,” and we’d shake hands. “I’m taking two conduits in yours, you’re taking a conduit in mine…”

I don’t like to use the term “wild, wild, west,” but it was really a very wild and fun time. My best times were just walking around with all the construction going on, with all the lane closures and all the activity. The traffic was backed up, cars were beeping, and would be driving by and I would just be standing there looking at the big hole in the ground with a big smile on my face. It really was the best time.

Pacific Tier: Did you have any catastrophic backhoe cuts or anything disruptive during consutruction? 

Eric Bender: We, during our construction our guys, we never had an incident where we hit any other conduit. There was a water or a sewer line that got hit, and nicked, and that was something that that was not actually on the infrastructure plan. And it wasn’t marked on the street so it wasn’t our problem so much.

There was a close call with a gas line. But nothing happened. But for the most part (Eric knocking on his wooden desk) they did a good job.

The toughest part to build, which we were actually the participant in and XO was the lead builder on 7th, I think somewhere between Olive and Grand, it shows you the history of LA but, back when they had the street cars, the RED Line, YELLOW Line, and all these other street cars, they never really demoed (demolished) those out.

They just over the years paved over and over and over. As they were excavating and going down the road, the path where they were going, and which later became obvious because of the railroad, they had to rip through all the railroad ties. It was terrible.

Because of that, then they had to get an archaeologist because you know you have bricks from the support for the railroad, because they are historical. I don’t know what they would do with it, it is in the middle of 7th St (a major road in downtown LA) and Grand Ave, that can’t, you know set up a museum in the middle of it, but it shut the project down. The city had some very peculiar rules that you cannot dig on Sundays that go back to the old blue laws basically, no construction activity on Sundays.

Some streets they won’t let you work during the week, you know it goes back to the days when downtown was a main shopping area, so you know, so you couldn’t dig during the week. You could only dig on Saturdays from nine (a.m.) till three (p.m.) which means you get about from ten till two because you have clean up and everything.

So some projects that should have been done within a week took like eight weeks to get done. So the city tried, but they were not the easiest. The only company that got to work on Sunday was QWEST, because, well, nobody is really sure exactly what happened or how, but they did have several projects where they were working on Sundays.

====

This ends part two of the “Wiring LA” interview series. Part Three will explore some of the risks of building such a dense concentration of telecom projects within the downtown LA area.

The entire interview is available online.

Previous entries in this series include:

Part 1 – Wiring Los Angeles, an Interview with Eric Bender, President of Wilshire Connection

 

John Savageau, Long Beach

 

Filed under Internet and Telecom, LA Life Tagged with , , , , , ,

Wiring Los Angeles with Eric Bender, President of Wilshire Connection

November 7, 2009 1 Comment

Downtown Los Angeles is among the most densely connected telecommunication hubs in the world. A dozen buildings in LA’s city center house the world’s largest Internet networks, Laying Down Telecom Conduits and Cabletelecommunication carriers, content management networks, and entertainment companies – interconnected through a complex mesh of submarine fiber optic cables, terrestrial cables, and internet exchange points.

With more than 500 networks and carriers operating within the LA city center, one company stands out from the crowd as a leader in bringing the global telecommunications and Internet community together. Eric Bender is president of Wilshire Connection, a facility-based carrier focusing on providing neutral, high capacity fiber optic cable interconnecting the most important buildings in Los Angeles.

Wilshire Connection (WilCon) has a vision to free the LA telecom and Internet-enabled community from the burden of developing a highly meshed inter-building infrastructure, allowing each company to focus on bringing value to their global network interconnections and relationships. Eric Bender, President of Wilshire Connection, is the man behind WilCon’s dramatic success in wiring Los Angeles.

This interview will cover, in a multi-article series, the history of modern telecommunications in downtown Los Angeles, the role Wilcon played in LA’s redevelopment, the period of rapid and chaotic build out prior to the Democratic National Convention in 2000, the risk of high density telecom infrastructure, and the future vision of Eric Bender and Wilcon.

Pacific Tier: Today we have Eric Bender, President of Wilshire Connection. Eric, can you tell us a little about yourself, and how Wilcon came around?

Eric Bender: Sure, we founded Wilcon, Wilshire Connection back in 1998. I am one of the founders and one of the partners, and have run the company pretty much from the beginning. I’m a real estate guy by background. I graduated from college and have always worked in the real estate field, whether its commercial property, management, brokerage, home build, whatever…

Back in late 1996 I started working for a Hong Kong based family which was acquiring some office buildings in downtown LA, one of which was 611 Wilshire Blvd which was directly across the street from One Wilshire. Back at that time telecom deregulation had just been passed, the 1996 Deregulation Act, and there was a boom of CLECs formed and started. Nextlink, the precursor to Level 3 (Kiewit and Sons), MFS was expanding into a variety of things, Worldcom, a variety of these companies were just starting up in that time frame.

For a lot of different reasons One Wilshire had become kind of a focal point for telecom, primarily because it is a 30 story building, had very clear line of sight to the east, and back in the day when microwave transmission was the primary factor, (One Wilshire) had great eastward pointing microwave capabilities. And because of this many of the deregulated companies had got into One Wilshire.

Because our building 611 Wilshire was directly across the street, and only 50% occupied, and One Wilshire was still an office building that only had a meet me room component to it, – that was really it, from a real estate side of things we said “we have all the space, you have all these new companies coming and can’t do it, send them over to us, we’ll fill our building with them, and let’s put some conduit between the buildings together as a virtual extension of (the meet me room) of One Wilshire.

Additionally we put in some conduits that the One Wilshire building actually provided for.

A year or two later we had bought, and were converting other buildings in downtown (700 Wilshire, 818 W. 7th St.) and saw a need to have those buildings connected back to 611 and One Wilshire.

Standing on the street corner thinking about it we decided that we should become a facilities-based carrier. We went and got our authority from the state to become a carrier, CLEC, and I can’t remember the other authorities we received. Then we decided that’s how we are going to do it. We started digging the streets building the network and connecting the buildings, our own buildings, together.

We decided as a way to fund the build out, because at the time, 1997 and 1998 a lot of buildings had empty space in downtown LA, they all saw what was happening not only with our buildings, but other buildings that had empty space, and saw how telecom was taking massive amounts space. And the reality was landlords wanted telecom companies as tenants because they paid higher rent, they paid for their own improvements to build out their space, they paid for their own utilities, the buildings did not have to provide janitorial, nor provide much in the line of services.

So we created, as part of our model with Wilshire Connection, the ability to connect all these other buildings into our network. This tied them back to One Wilshire and all these other telecom buildings. And that was our methodology of raising funds to build our improvements to our infrastructure.

Pacific Tier: So what role do you believe Wilcon played in the development of downtown LA as a telecom center?

Eric Bender: Well, trying to be as modest as I can, we probably played the primary role in that, because, several buildings are telecom buildings today because we were building our network and including them. They may have become a telecom building in some way differently, but the fact that we connect them into our network which covers and ties all the building together on a neutral basis was really the instrumental part, including 600 W. 7th St, 800 Hope, 818 W. 7th St., which has Level 3′s gateway, Equinix, and others – brought these buildings back to One Wilshire and to each other – together they became the success that they are.

Pacific Tier: What was your criteria for selecting the buildings that you POPed (built a point of presence) or entered, or dropped cable?

Eric Bender: We were note really picky. At the time we were building the network it depended on which buildings came to us, what they were willing to contribute to the cost of (build out), and how important it was to them to be connected to the network.

Pacific Tier: The actual process of laying conduit in downtown Los Angeles, did the city support you?

Eric Bender: Not initially, it was quite challenging. Part of it was because a lot of this activity was new and we were building our network, planning our network to cnnect the buildings. But you had the other companies that were building their networks, such as Level 3, MFN (actually they came a bit later), MCI was adding a lot more conduit and buildings, and others. The city was not prepared, I don’t think, from an engineering perspective and plan check to deal with all that, so they were backed up, and you had companies like Level 3 which was building a network throughout the entire city basically.

The city’s engineering department that reviewed the plans – you would go in and the entire office would be stacked four, five , six feet high with plans of what they were planning to build. And it took months and months, 6 to 8 months at times.

This is the end of part 1 of our interview with Eric Bender. Additional segments to the interview will discuss the actual buildout of Wilscon’s network prior to the Democratic National Convention in 2000, the risk of having such high density infrastructure in downtown Los Angeles, and future plans for Wilcon and Eric Bender.

====

John Savageau, Long Beach

You can listen to the entire interview online at Pacific Tier

 

Filed under Entrepreneurs, Internet and Telecom, LA Life Tagged with , , , , ,

Managing Emergency Communications – A Tutorial with Marc Ladin

October 23, 2009 Leave a comment

The Station Fire ripped through communities along the northern rim of Los Angeles in August and September, consuming an area more than 160,000 Emergency Notificationacres. Evacuations came with little or no warning, homes and buildings lost, and the entire ordeal put a tremendous strain on utilities and resources. Including water.

When the city of Glendale needed to quickly alert residents to lower their water and power use to enable fire fighters to gain access to critical resources, they turned to a local company, Everbridge, to reach citizens with real-time notifications alerting them to the emergency.

On Thursday night Marc Ladin, VP of Global Marketing at Everbridge, walked CTC members though an introduction to emergency and incident communications management.

The Need for Emergency Management

Communications technology has made incredible leaps in utility, applications, ands capacity over the past few years. We can reach nearly any point or person in the world through telephone, mobile phones, Internet email, Twitter, Blackberry messaging, radio, television – the list is becoming endless.

Regardless of the technologies, natural and man-made disasters and problems remain a part of our lives, and will always be part of our lives. Our businesses, governments, and even survival, depends on how we prepare for disaster, and are able to respond to events that touch our lives. Good events and bad.

Marc Ladin makes a living solving the problem of communicating during emergencies and events. The residents of Glendale, like most communities in the United States, offers residents the option of registering their preferred communications devices with the city.

This gives the city an immediate channel to reach and inform residents in the event of disasters and other incidents of interest or impact to the city and residents.

In the case of the Station Fire, Glendale was able to immediately reach enough residents, and the city was able to lower residential utility draw to the level fire fighters had adequate water resources to protect the community.

The same model applies across the spectrum of emergency notification.

The Enterprise Business Continuity Plan

Nobody wants to think of a disaster that will hurt people, or isolate them from their family or organizations. However, it is also clear that any organization needs to have a business continuity plan in place, and a disaster response plan in place to allow the organization to quickly respond to, and manage, any event that will potentially damage the organization’s ability to function.

Consider this scenario. A large multi-national chemical products company. Highly visible in the world business community, and customers located around the world.

The worst case scenario happens. At the HQ site an explosion occurs in the manufacturing plant, killing several person in senior leadership roles, and requiring a massive response by emergency services and evacuation in the surrounding community.

Who do we need to notify to respond to the emergency, and who needs to know about the problem?

  • First responders – fire fighters, HAZMAT teams, ambulances, local hospitals, police
  • Local Community – residents, media (radio and television)
  • Company leadership – management, public affairs, operations
  • National and global media

How do you get the message – the real message – out to those people?

How do we determine if somebody is trapped in the disaster area, and needs help?

The process is getting easier. Every person, machine, and device connected to the Internet or other global communications service can be part of the event notification process.

Registering Your Communications Device for Notification

A company such as Everbridge offers as utility for managing emergency and event notifications. The utility (Everbridge) operates as a SaaS (Software as a Service) application, physically separated from the users. The SaaS application resides on several geographically diverse data centers, with multiple communication providers providing the conduit for global device notification access.

An organization will compile a table of their users and devices, with an individual having the ability to register all their available communications devices (mobile phones, email, Twitter accounts, etc), including a preference on notification priority (i.e., mobile phone message first, email second, home phone third…).

The organization then has the ability to sort members into different categories of notification. An example of how an organization might be sorted is:

  • C-level management notifications
  • Persons notified during emergencies
  • Geography (everybody in the Long Beach office, everybody in the Atlanta office, everybody in Japan, etc)
  • Function (operations, engineering, marketing and sales)
  • Local area first responders
  • And any other desired sort

Of course a single entry is easily tagged for multiple notification categories.

How to Make a Notification

In a traditional environment company leadership wants to make a notification. They may have their secretary make phone calls, might call an operations center and open a notification checklist, or other time-tested process.

The modern notification system can use a wider variety of methods for generating a notification:

  • A human being opens a web page and types in a notification message for distribution
  • A human being prepares an email or SMS message, and sends it to an address that spawns the desired notification tree
  • A machine experiences a condition that requires a human response
    • Fire alarm
    • Equipment failure
    • Security break-in or event
    • Etc

Once the message is triggered, and the notifications made, then you need to make a decision on whether or not the notified persons need to acknowledge or respond to the notification. Modern systems also manage and automate the acknowledgement process by logging replies to the notification message, allowing the alert initiator to determine if everybody has received the message.

This is important if you are managing a disaster, and need to determine if somebody could potentially be hurt or in danger, or if you need to escalate a decision situation to the next person in a business continuity plan.

With GPS capability, it is now even possible to determine the exact location of a desired device, further helping locate persons in a disaster. Consider a heart patient with an active monitoring device – that device can be registered in a hospital, first-responder, family, and neighbor notification matrix. This will increase the probability that person will survive in the event of health problems.

Other Creative Ways to Use a Notification System

Of course the same system that handles emergencies can also handle positive messages. The marketing group can use the same notification system for press releases, management can deliver positive company results to employees – basically once the person and device/s are registered in a data base, the entry can be used for whatever desired.

Marc Ladin presented a great vision. His company is putting the vision into reality, and has a lot of exciting features available today, and in the mill for tomorrow.

John Savageau, Long Beach

Filed under Internet and Telecom, LA Life Tagged with , , , , , ,

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