Coddled?

In response to Vincent Ryan's article in the Aug. 21 issue:

Coddled? I looked it up. It means to be babied, pampered. He applies the term to those who work for ILECs.

I started with a dreaded incumbent telco (they weren't called that then) in 1958 and am still going strong. Now let me get this straight: the men and women who built and maintained the world's best, most reliable, and cost-effective telecommunications system are coddled? While young Mr. Ryan was still in knickers, these people were working in all kinds of weather to establish facilities, install phones and equipment, and handle customer problems. I myself have been called out in snowstorms to repair a single line because of a declared emergency. I know people who regularly churn up mountainsides in a Sno-Cat to maintain radio sites. We worked back-to-back shifts ensuring that critical NASA and JPL circuits functioned during missions. But I forget - really we were just being "coddled."

Anyone who has been in this business over 25 years has had to learn his or her job again, and then re-learn it as technology forges ahead. We've been faced with downsizing and mergers (I've gone through two of them). We've seen a judge decide competition would make everything better. That has led to opening up our COs to anyone who wants to be a phone company. They come into our office, throw some equipment in the corner, lay cables all over the floor and call that an installation. Then we explain to them how a POTS line or a 56K circuit really works. These same outfits regularly interrupt my dinner with pleas to switch to their service. My telephone bill looks like a prospectus. When people report trouble on their line or system, the first order of business is to see just whose responsibility it is.

Now is this the "open competitive landscape in telecom services" to which Mr. Ryan was referring? I've seen a lot of change over the years. Maybe in a few years there won't even be ILECs as we know them today. My hat is off to the pioneers who built the network that all of this is being built upon - oh yeah, and to all their "coddled" workers.

Don D. Walde Engineer/Tester Comstock Telcom Reno, Nev.

Editor's Note: Vincent Ryan maintains that he was never "in knickers."