Multiplexer? I hardly KNOW her!

Dec 3, 2003 12:00 PM, by Ed Gubbins

Last week Optical Insight defiantly urged those of you still working on the afternoon before Thanksgiving to stop being productive and submit punch lines to various current industry events. The results were every bit as hilarious as you might imagine folks in the highly technical, highly troubled optical telecom industry would produce. Here are some of them.

Setup: In addition to studying telecom technology at Boston’s Northeastern University, ICG Communications’ new interim CEO Jeffrey Pearl has a degree in psychology.

Punch line: He’s looking to integrate these two disparate fields by alpha testing the first ESP-driven mesh network...

Punch line: As Pearl gets deeper into his telecom career, he intends to make use of his degree to figure out just how he let himself get conned into this job.

[Ed: See what I mean?]

Setup: Reykjavik, Iceland has set the goal of becoming the first city in the world to bring fiber to every single one of its households.

Punch line: ...Both of them!

[Ed: There were several punch lines exactly like that one. Sorry, Reykjavik.]

Punch line:...Creating a new telecom acronym FTTUSVR: Fiber To The Useless Slab of Volcanic Rock.

[Ed: Ouch!]

Punch line: Instead of burying the cable, they will merely lay it along the ground and pour water over it for an instant cost-effective, weather-proof and secure housing.

[Ed: That one was from an Australian, no surprise.] 

Setup: Led by former Apogee Networks founder Pablo Tapia, the recently-formed Carolina Group Technologies promises to help American telecom companies outsource telecom software development work to India and the Dominican Republic.

Punch line: Mr. Tapia was unable to name his company “The Perigee Group,” since it was already taken by out-of-work software engineers in New Jersey.

[Ed: I’m not sure I even get that one. Maybe, as Johnny Carson used to say every time an Abraham Lincoln assassination joke bombed, “It’s still too soon.”]

Setup: LightPath Technologies is adding collimators over an extended wavelength range to its product portfolio, which includes precision-molded aspheric optics and isolators. (See how hard this is?)

Punch line: Next year’s product line will include the In-Sink-Erator to reduce the amount of unused dark fiber in the ground.

[Ed: In addition to the points earned here for difficulty, I have to admit I like this one, mostly because I like saying “In-Sink-Erator” (it even has a  comedy K!) and say it around the house instead of “garbage disposal,” which we Arkansans usually call “dispose-alls” anyway.]

Setup: An equipment vendor exec recently told me, "They're building a Verizon a year in China."

Punch line: Unfortunately, the equipment vendors are only getting a Cincinnati-Bell-a-year in revenues.

Punch line: This explains the recent births of several thousand Chinese babies with a striking resemblance to Ivan Seidenberg.

[Ed: Not bad at all. I’ll have to do this again sometime. Thanks to all contributors. Now get back to work!]