As another veteran of telecommunications I feel compelled to follow up Eric’s blog with some thoughts of my own.

For those of you who have been in the technology arena for many years, you will understand my awe at the progress and technological innovations that have occurred. I marvel that when I started in this business (don’t ask how long ago that was – it’s impolite to ask a lady that question), modems and CSU’s were bigger than today’s servers running enterprise wide applications. PBX’s took up rooms rather than some small amount of space on a data rack.

In just a blink, I find myself utilizing a Blackberry that serves as my phone (almost anywhere) and my computer workstation, with a monitor the size of a deck of cards. My family and I own a camp in northern Maine and while cell service is still a pipe dream – I can get email on my Blackberry. Go figure that! Technology lets our business locations seem closer together than ever, sharing a single switch, world-wide, through the power of the internet and ingenious engineering on the part of PBX providers.


As participants in this progress, we too have had to evolve – to understand the transmission of data, if we were just voice before; to understand the million voice features on a PBX, if we were in the data world. Convergence is more than technology – it is people and our thought processes. In many ways it is easier and in many ways it is way more complex. But I think you’ll agree that the last 30 years have not been boring. Just imagine what the next 30 years will bring.