OFC Rump Session: Reimagining global comms
Imagine a world plunged into digital silence. No texts, calls, emails, or internet.
At this year’s OFC conference in San Francisco, three teams of telecommunications experts will tackle a provocative thought experiment as part of the Rump Session: if Earth’s entire communication infrastructure vanished overnight, how would they rebuild it?
With a clean slate and ten years until implementation, the teams will outline what they consider is the ideal replacement global network.
The Rump Session’s audience will choose the best solution.
The scenario
OFC is asking the three teams of experts to imagine a world where global communication has been destroyed following an exceptional event.
Thankfully, only the network has been destroyed: manufacturing facilities, R&D sites, and communications expertise remain intact. So humanity has a chance to design a brand new network unencumbered by legacy equipment.
The ten-year implementation window is to allow emerging technologies to be considered as part of the new network build.
Considerations
Gazettabyte asked two telecom specialists outside the optical community how they would tackle the networking challenge.
If all the communications networks are down – fixed, mobile, satellite and broadcast – then it makes sense to get a simple universal comms system up and running as fast as possible, says William Webb, a consultant and author.
That would ensure there is enough communications to keep the population informed and allow those working on more complex systems to have communications while doing their design work.
For Dean Bubley, analyst and founder of Disruptive Analysis, the scenario triggers many questions.
Where will the demarcation point be between optical, wired and wireless networks?
“Is wireless just for the last kilometer or the last 10 meters of the access network?” says Bubley. “Or does wireless have a role for long-haul and transport as well, especially given the lower latency, and higher speed of light through air or a vacuum than through glass.”
Bubley wonders how to build in an expectation of continued innovation. Avoiding lock-in or static solutions is important: “Standards are fine, but there needs to be scope to try new things as well.”
Should Government oversee the restoration project or is the best approach to encourage competition and free market wherever possible? “Where does regulation fit and what does it focus on?” says Bubley.
Webb says the quickest way to get going is satellite coverage and portable antennas so people can use it when on the move even if it is nothing like as convenient as cellular.
The next stage would to launch High Altitude Platforms (HAPs) – tethered balloons and similar – to deliver cellular coverage relatively quickly.
A mix of tethered balloons near cities and high-altitude drones for other areas would deliver cellular comms within months, bringing cellular online at 4G-like capabilities.
“We can then work on a combined fixed-mobile solution. The ideal solution would have one fibre network delivering comms to homes, offices and cellular/Wi-Fi base stations, and one set of masts, ” says Webb.
Webb would forego network competition: it’s better to build a near-perfect network and then have a wholesale-retail split.
“Build from cities outwards, and stop building when the HAPs and satellite solution has the capacity to manage residual premises. Assume fibre to the edge of premises and Wi-Fi inside,” says Webb.
He would not rebuild cable networks or copper networks.
“But this sort of thing is best done by getting a group of us together and debating and discussing,” says Webb.
Just what the OFC Rump Session will do.
Origins
Antonio Tartaglia, one of this year’s Rump Session organisers, came up with the evening event’s theme.
“The Rump Session has always been my favourite OFC event. Joining the OFC Technical Program Committee, I was asked to contribute ideas,” says Tartaglia. “As a member of the public, I asked myself: ‘What is the Rump Session you’ve been dreaming of?’”
Tartaglia, system manager and expert in photonics technologies at Ericsson, is keen to learn what the teams of experts will come up with.
His educated guess is that optical technologies will take the lion’s share of the new network.
“It will also be hard to ignore low-earth orbit (LEO) satellite technology, that provides coverage where other technologies would not make economic sense,” says Tartaglia. Optical technologies will also play a big role here.
“But even in a brand-new world, I expect LEO satellites to complement, not replace terrestrial mobile networks as we know them,” says Tartaglia. “They are the result of decades of deep optimisation.”
“As scientists and engineers, we spend so much of our day-to-day work on improving the current state-of-the-art networks and taking that small next step forward in terms of technology, product or a solution,” says Dirk van den Borne, another of the Rump Session organisers.
He finds it intriguing to imagine how engineers would design the network if they could ignore existing installed equipment.
“This session will be thought-provoking and might spur great conversations at the conference and beyond,” says van den Borne, director of system engineering at Juniper Networks.
Rump Session details:
- When: April 1st Time:
- Evening time: 19:30 to 21:00
- Location: Rooms 203-204 (Level 2)
Books in 2023
Gazettabyte asks industry figures to pick their reads of the year. William Koss, Dean Bubley and Scott Wilkinson kick off this year’s recommended reads.
William R Koss, CEO at Drut Technologies
My 2023 reading list is less than normal as the year has been full of technical reading and presentation materials for work. I enjoy history books as well as business history that tell the rise and fall of some company, industry or person.
In Progress
Target Tokyo: The Story of the Sorge Spy Ring by Gordon W. Prange: I picked this book out of Amazon’s recommendation list. Gordon Prange being the author of At Dawn We Slept and Tora, Tora, Tora. Currently plowing through this book that was unfinished at the time of his death.
The Crusades: The War for the Holy Land by Thomas Asbridge. My knowledge of the Crusades was thin and I was looking for a book that provided a grand overview. So far it has not disappointed, but I have had to familiarize myself with many new names.
Completed Reads
Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne, from Normandy to Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest by Stephen E. Ambrose. A second read for me as I watched the series on Netflix over the summer and the thought occurred to read the book and compare and contrast the series to the book. Ambrose is a wonderful writer.
Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon by Michael Lewis. I was raising venture capital during the crypto craze from the same firms SBF raised capital and I admit that reading this book is part schadenfreude.
Circle of Treason: CIA Traitor Aldrich Ames and the Men He Betrayed by Sandra Grimes and Jeanne Vertefeuille.A second read for me. Something triggered the thought of Aldrich Ames and I read the book in two days.
The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann. A very fun read and puts into perspective the speed of news and information that we enjoy today. People thought along the time scale of years in the 1700s
This Kind of War: The Classic Korean War History by T.R. Fehrenbach. My father was in the Korean War and I have read many a book on the subject. It was a new read for me.
Duel in the Sun: Alberto Salazar, Dick Beardsley, and America’s Greatest Marathon by John Brant. My hobby is road cycling, but I have a colleague who has run the Boston Marathon a few times. The Boston Marathon route is within walking distance of my house and my colleague recommended this book as the best book written on marathon racing. I finished it on a couple of airplane rides.
Unscripted: The Epic Battle for a Media Empire and the Redstone Family Legacy by James B. Stewart and Rachel Abrams. A complete disappointment. The book was recommended by a former colleague and I just did not find all the personal details that interesting. I think I was hoping for a better read along the lines of the series Succession which had just ended and that was the reason for my reading.
Castles of Steel: Britain, Germany, and the Winning of the Great War at Sea by Robert K. Massie. Robert Massie is a master historian. One of the greats of our time. I have read Dreadnaught and Castles of Steel a few times. This book is master level history telling. Magnificent in all regards. Sections of the book can be read as short books. The story of Von Spee’s journey from the Pacific to Atlantic could be a single book. I am about to start his book Nicholas and Alexandra about the fall of the Romanov Dynasty.
Dean Bubley, technology industry analyst & futurist at Disruptive Analysis
A recent stand-out for me is Material World: The Six Raw Materials That Shape Modern Civilization by Ed Conway.
I found the book fascinating. It helped me gain a new angle on a lot of the issues faced in the economy and society overall, as well as specific bits of the tech sector.
It tells the stories of the production, processing, transport and use of some of the core minerals we use throughout society and technology. The book covers:
- sand/silicon used for concrete and also semiconductors and optical fibre
- lithium for batteries
- copper for cables, generators and motors
- oil & gas and why they’re still necessary at least for creating products rather than combustion (such as carbon anodes in batteries)
- salt(s) for multiple purposes
- iron & steel
One of the things I often realise is that it is easy to get wrapped up in technology including telecoms. We talk about virtualisation, AI, cloud, orchestration and software all the time.
There’s also a lot of physics. I often talk about radio spectrum and wireless propagation, including 5G and WiFi indoors and through walls. But I don’t pay much attention to the chemistry and materials involved.
This book poses some hard questions, such as where we get enough lithium (and also cobalt and other metals) for decarbonisation, or enough copper for new generators and grid capacity.
My takeout is that the next 20-30 years involve a tightrope walk, buffeted by the winds of physical materials, economics, geopolitics and hidden dependencies. It’s all very well saying ‘just stop doing X’, but sometimes (at least some) of X is essential in order to continue making Y or doing Z.
We also must be careful not just about “supplier diversity” for complex systems like radio access network equipment, or even the components and chips, but all the way down to the raw materials, which may be mined or refined in only a few places around the world.
Worth a read or a listen. I’m an audiobook devotee & this is narrated well enough to listen at 3x speed.
Scott Wilkinson, lead analyst, networking components, Cignal AI
There have been several books this year that I recommended to friends and colleagues. The Cartel by Don Winslow provides unique insights (for fiction) into the crisis at the southern US border.
My son, a Biomechanical Engineering Master’s student at Virginia Tech, and I both read Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary. It’s like candy to engineers and I enjoyed discussing it with him as he made his way through the chapters.
I recently finished Rod Chernow’s massive biography, Grant, which was fascinating on every page, especially to those who were erroneously taught that he was a mediocre general who won the Civil War due only to attrition and not due to his strategic genius.
But the one book that I recommend the most to my engineering colleagues and history fans is The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge by David McCullough. I’ve read several of McCullough’s histories, but never got around to reading this, his first. The Great Bridge tells the story of the building of the Brooklyn Bridge. It was an engineering feat that is hard to comprehend today.
Anyone driving or taking a subway train across the East River nay have difficulty imagining a time when Brooklyn and Manhattan were separate cities. The only way to get from one to the other was by ferry, and the residents in Brooklyn were worried that any more permanent connection might bring NYC corruption across the river. Washington Roebling took over the project when his father unexpectedly died early in the planning stages. With only his mind and his pencil, he designed every aspect of the bridge from the caissons sunk deep into the river to the cables spanning the towers. Plagued by an unknown disease he contracted after repeatedly descending into the pressurized caissons (what we now know as the bends), Roebling – and his very underappreciated wife, Emily – nevertheless managed a feat that boggles the mind, especially for engineers who let computers do the heavy lifting today.
The book describes challenges ranging from river currents to corruption to political interference, and parallels to modern times are not hard to make. Yet, almost 100 years later, when the bridge was inspected, the only recommendation was to add a coat of paint. The engineering is breathtaking, but the ability of the Chief Engineer to accomplish it with the tools of his time and with all of the roadblocks thrown up is awe-inspiring.
On a recent visit to New York to visit my daughter during her internship at the AMNH, I tried to convince the family to all travel down to the Brooklyn Bridge, just to look at it again in person. I was overruled, but that’s ok. It’ll still be there the next time, and for a long time after.
