Ugly as she was, Katrina may have given BellSouth a rare opportunity: the chance to turn one of the oldest cities in the USA into a showcase for 21st-century communications.
Talk of how New Orleans could look some day may seem fanciful considering it may take years to make the city livable again.
Assuming New Orleans rises again, a city rebuilt from the ground up could boast the best voice, data and video communications infrastructure in the nation, says Bill Smith, BellSouth's chief technology officer.
"It's hard under the circumstances to see this disaster in that light," Smith says. "But if you were bound and determined to find a silver lining to this catastrophe, one could say that there is the potential here to rebuild a state-of-the-art network in every respect."
If BellSouth does decide to rebuild its network, it could be "a golden opportunity for the city," says Forrester Research analyst Lisa Pierce.
Wired with a state-of-the-art broadband network, she says, New Orleans could make vast improvements to health care, education and the local emergency communications network.
Emergency communications between the local and state governments, criticized in the aftermath of Katrina, could finally be standardized using the same type of network technology, she says.
To turn New Orleans into a state-of-the-art showcase, BellSouth would have to replace its 120-year-old copper phone wire with sleek fiber-optic lines that have far more capacity. Fiber offers mind-bending speeds on the Internet — 100 megabits per second or more. Copper delivers a fraction of that.
Hossein Eslambolchi, AT&T's chief technology officer, says BellSouth would also be wise to take advantage of Internet Protocol (IP) technologies, which are becoming the favored technology of businesses around the globe.
"They're going to have to dig up the street anyway" to make extensive repairs, he says. "So why not just go ahead and install fiber" and IP?
The short answer: money.
If BellSouth's wiring — called "plant" in the industry — "is in good working condition, we will repair it," Smith says.
If that isn't possible, he says, "We would likely demolish all plant and facilities and rebuild with state-of-the-art equipment."
He says it may be awhile before BellSouth can make decisions. Owing to dangerous conditions in the city, crews haven't done inspections yet. It is trying to gauge the damage by looking at photographs.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/2005-09-11-katrina-communications-edge_x.htm
Talk of how New Orleans could look some day may seem fanciful considering it may take years to make the city livable again.
Assuming New Orleans rises again, a city rebuilt from the ground up could boast the best voice, data and video communications infrastructure in the nation, says Bill Smith, BellSouth's chief technology officer.
"It's hard under the circumstances to see this disaster in that light," Smith says. "But if you were bound and determined to find a silver lining to this catastrophe, one could say that there is the potential here to rebuild a state-of-the-art network in every respect."
If BellSouth does decide to rebuild its network, it could be "a golden opportunity for the city," says Forrester Research analyst Lisa Pierce.
Wired with a state-of-the-art broadband network, she says, New Orleans could make vast improvements to health care, education and the local emergency communications network.
Emergency communications between the local and state governments, criticized in the aftermath of Katrina, could finally be standardized using the same type of network technology, she says.
To turn New Orleans into a state-of-the-art showcase, BellSouth would have to replace its 120-year-old copper phone wire with sleek fiber-optic lines that have far more capacity. Fiber offers mind-bending speeds on the Internet — 100 megabits per second or more. Copper delivers a fraction of that.
Hossein Eslambolchi, AT&T's chief technology officer, says BellSouth would also be wise to take advantage of Internet Protocol (IP) technologies, which are becoming the favored technology of businesses around the globe.
"They're going to have to dig up the street anyway" to make extensive repairs, he says. "So why not just go ahead and install fiber" and IP?
The short answer: money.
If BellSouth's wiring — called "plant" in the industry — "is in good working condition, we will repair it," Smith says.
If that isn't possible, he says, "We would likely demolish all plant and facilities and rebuild with state-of-the-art equipment."
He says it may be awhile before BellSouth can make decisions. Owing to dangerous conditions in the city, crews haven't done inspections yet. It is trying to gauge the damage by looking at photographs.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/2005-09-11-katrina-communications-edge_x.htm
