FROM THE INDUSTRY
language that even the data’s still trying to decode!
convenience it became a revolution. It brought mothers closer to their sons at war, lovers across continents, merchants to markets. It changed everything. From Manual to Automatic As the 20th century progressed, so too did our ambition. Out went the human switchboards and in came the Strowger Electro-Mechanical switch era, clunky and loud but groundbreaking in its implications. It was the beginning of automation, the first step toward a world where machines would carry the load of connection. Long before the digital age the Strowger Telephone network quietly stretched across continents, a vast mechanical mind invisibly connecting humanity in what may have been the largest living machine the world has ever known. Anyone else still remember the distinct smell of burning Bakelite and the scent of lubricating oil from the Strowger Exchange era? Ah, the good old days when technology came with its own perfume! For many, the telephone became a lifeline. I still remember stories from GPO technicians who spent winters climbing poles, thawing frozen lines with blowtorches just to make sure a grandmother in Yorkshire could call her daughter for Christmas. These weren’t just jobs; they were more an act of service and duty. The electro-mechanical hum of the Strowger system was the beautiful sound of innovation in motion, a symphony of progress that marked the dawn of automated telecommunications. There are only 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don’t Then came the digital dawn. It was a quieter revolution, unfolding in code and carrier signals. Analogue voice, with all its crackle and charm, gave way to the precision of binary. With PCM (Pulse Code Modulation), voice was transformed into data. Data was broken into packets, and those packets learned how to move. With network protocols came the new language of data transfer, and algorithms gave it intelligence. The saying ‘hardware makes it faster, software makes it smarter’ once rang true, but today, the lines are blurred, hardware’s getting smarter too. Now, both are in a race to outsmart each other, speaking a
The Telephone Exchanges we once knew, clattering behemoths with miles of cabling were replaced by cabinets, then racks, then cards. Yet the significance was not in the size reduction, it was in what it meant for our future. Digital meant Scale Speed, Efficiency and most crucially, it meant we could do more than talk. The birth of ISDN, ADSL, early broadband; these were not just upgrades, they were tectonic shifts. Cellular Dreams: The Era of Mobility If the landline gave us reach, mobility gave us freedom. The first mobile phones were bricks, heavy, awkward and rare. But for those who had one, it was pure magic. To speak while walking, to call while driving, to connect without being tethered to a cord - it was science fiction made real. Like all great revolutions, it didn’t just stop; it accelerated. From 1G to 6G, each new generation brought new capabilities. What began as a simple voice connection evolved into a platform for everything: work, love, learning and play. Today, mobile networks are the nervous system of modern life, and we trust them with everything from our hearts to finances and our health plus a great deal more. When you think how far we’ve come, I can’t help but laugh. Who would have thought that, back then, a simple thing like ordering a pizza on the way home from work would feel so liberating and revolutionary? The Fibre Frontier: To Infinity and Beyond And now we come to the age of light. A technology so elegant, so deceptively simple, yet so profound. A single strand of glass, thinner than a hair, pulsing with light at near lightspeed, carrying the world’s information with barely a whisper of delay. The first time I saw a fusion splice under a microscope, I was stunned. Two tiny glass filaments fused by heat, transmitting light as though they’d always been connected. It felt poetic. FTTH—fibre to the home— has brought this miracle to doorsteps. In many parts of the world, the speeds we now take for granted would have been unimaginable even a decade ago. 1Gbps. 10Gbps. Soon, terabit-capable links. But more than speed, it’s what fibre represents. It’s permanence. Resilience. A commitment to the future. It’s laying down roots not just for today’s internet, but for tomorrow’s innovation.
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SEPTEMBER 2025 Volume 47 No.3
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