By Jim Pilgrim I’m driving down the freeway through the great state of Michigan near the end of a long day. When I pulled off the interstate my car started running rough and it stalled at the bottom of the exit ramp. Start and stall, start and stall, luckily I was able to limp it a half a mile to my hotel. Being a backyard mechanic, I’m thinking fuel pump or one of the many sensors (O2, throttle position sensor, cam shaft position sensor) that are critical on late model cars. With 366,000 miles on my Accord I knew it was only a matter of time. After I checked into my hotel room I thought I’d search the internet to see how far away the nearest Honda dealer is, now remember I’m in Michigan where GM, Ford, and Chrysler dominate. Much to my surprise there was a Honda dealer less than a half mile away. I decided to get up early the next morning before traffic got too heavy and see if it had another half mile of luck left. Being in the right place at the right time can mean many things in life. If you are reading this you are almost certainly in the Telecom industry. Those of us in this industry are absolutely in the right place at the right time. Our industry is dynamic and healthy, and we are in the midst of a total revolution of the network, migrating from a copper/coax plant to fiber. Fiber to the Home, Ethernet, WDM and soft switches carrying high speed data, video services and cellular traffic. Thomas Edison once said “Vision without execution is a hallucination”. I love that quip but in my opinion it is incomplete. You have to have the correct vision. I attended a FTTH seminar in Indianapolis this week and heard something that shocked me. Some carriers are looking at setting cost structures for data on how much bandwidth you use. I can see their point, with all the iPhones out there sucking up bandwidth along with customers on their computers downloading video content, music, and internet gaming, it is almost an impossible task to keep the network pipes big enough to keep up with demand. But are we really going to go back to a “measured” service model? I’ve been in this industry long enough to remember the difference between a 1FR and a 1MR, 1MR being a measured residential POTS line. Ok, maybe we will have some carriers try a measured service approach to help offset the cost of the data appetites of Americans. But my vision tells me that it will only be a temporary “phase”. It wasn’t that long ago, although it seems like it was a lifetime, that cellular plans started out that way. Now I see them as the exception and the unlimited minute plans as the rule. Where there is competition, someone will always be there to change the dynamics and try to gain customers by offering a better (unlimited) package. Let’s all work together and keep the fiber revolution advancing. Let’s build a network that will last decades to promote business productivity and growth, information sharing, and entertainment. Are ya’ll wondering what happened with my car? Well I dodged a bullet; it was my Mass Air Flow Sensor that had got a little dirty which messed with the computer, that whole air – fuel mixture thing. Only cost me $90 and I was back on the road again. Hope I’m good for another 366,000 miles I was truly blessed to have had car trouble in that place at that time. It could have happened anywhere, and I mean anywhere as I drive about 75,000 miles a year. I am equally blessed to work in this industry that has brought me so many good friends, so much knowledge, and has helped me support my family. Timing is everything and I was reminded of that again in Brighton, Michigan.