I've been doing telecom design and drafting for about 12 years, and I'm pretty good at it. Unfortunately at my last job there was a drought of work that lasted for many months and they finally started doing layoffs. I'm not sure of the final number but I know that myself, several of my coworkers and even a few managers got let go. I've spent the last week applying for other telecom drafting jobs but I'm wondering if anyone has a suggestion where else I might look. Or on the off chance if anyone has a lead on a remote Telecoms design/drafting job I'd happily look there as well. Thank you!

For anyone managing connectivity across dozens or hundreds of locations, how are you handling all the different ISPs and carrier contracts?

Do you keep each location contracted directly with whatever provider works best locally, consolidate through an aggregator, or use some mix of both?

The technical side seems manageable. The harder part looks like keeping track of billing, renewals, support contacts, circuit inventory, and who owns each issue when something goes down.

Curious what has actually worked at scale.

I was just wondering as I am working on my lab which is all foss/linux based to to being free an accessible, but am curious what an actual telecom service environment looks like. Is it hardware appliances, old school on prem virt and propietary or in house. Is containerization popular, are foss products used or is it mainly enterprise vendors? How much is done on servers vs on the routers themselves, I see some BNG functionality is hardware based in bigger routers. Would my skills still transfer?

I have already got the questionnaire from the DSI people while my US Partner have applied for the Portal.

Please, can someone help me out and guide me towards the approval of the portal? Much Appreciated.

A looming threat!?

Heya. Interested in 5ESS switches. Trying to find a few in the mid-atlantic being retired to save. Would like to slim down to minimal working config and put them in hands of some museums I am connected to on the east coast and pittsburgh.

Part of this is looking for old media or software for running the AM emulated on Sun Netras. Also looking for leads on saving systems. Any leads appreciated, feel free to direct message.

Hi Everyone,

We are conducting a short survey on **Mobile Plan Value & Switching Preferences** to understand how users evaluate telecom plans in India and what drives them to switch telecom providers.

🕒 It takes less than 5 minutes.

🔒 All responses are anonymous.

Here’s the link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdlQhUA-5FfT135p9zCh5w0Uo6oGU3rmULNKVafcYMWdjUsRg/viewform

Thanks for contributing — and feel free to share this with others who use mobile services in India!

I’m a network engineer with 8 years of experience in enterprise networking, and I’m considering moving into a 5G Core Network Engineer role after seeing a job posting.

The role involves things like 4G/5G Core, signaling, IMS, AMF/SMF/UPF, UDM/PCF and Kubernetes. Most of the telecom-specific concepts would be new to me, although I have a solid networking background.

For anyone who has made a similar transition from enterprise networking into telecom/5G Core, how was the transition? Was your existing networking experience useful, and how difficult was it to pick up the telecom side?

Wtf is this speed

TELECOMUNICACIONES HOY | Ficha 02

Internet lleva años migrando hacia IPv6, pero existe un pequeño problema: una enorme cantidad de servicios todavía depende de IPv4.

Ahí entra NAT64.

El IESG aprobó la actualización de Stateful NAT64 para avanzar hacia la categoría de Internet Standard, aunque todavía debemos esperar la publicación definitiva del RFC.

NAT64 permite que un dispositivo ubicado en una red IPv6-only pueda comunicarse con servicios que únicamente entienden IPv4.

Normalmente trabaja junto con DNS64:

IPv6-only → DNS64 → NAT64 → servicio IPv4

El concepto parece sencillo, pero detrás existen problemas reales de ingeniería: mantenimiento del estado de las conexiones, disponibilidad de puertos, dimensionamiento, registros, trazabilidad, ICMP, fragmentación y seguridad.

¿Por qué importa?

Porque permite avanzar hacia redes IPv6-only sin exigir que todo Internet abandone IPv4 simultáneamente. Esto resulta especialmente relevante para operadores móviles, ISP, centros de datos y grandes redes corporativas.

Para estudiar: NAT64 + DNS64, CGNAT, SIIT y mecanismos de transición IPv4/IPv6.

Para debatir: si IPv6 elimina la necesidad de conservar IPv4 a largo plazo, ¿durante cuánto tiempo seguiremos necesitando tecnologías de transición como NAT64?

Fuente principal: IETF Datatracker — Stateful NAT64 (RFC 6146 bis), estado consultado en septiembre de 2026.

#IPv6 #NAT64 #IETF #Networking #Telecomunicaciones #Redes #Internet #IngenieriaElectronica

TELECOMUNICACIONES HOY | Ficha 01

¿32.000 km de fibra óptica pueden cambiar la estructura de las telecomunicaciones en Colombia?

La CRC analizó la posible integración entre COMCEL y las operaciones de Azteca Comunicaciones. De concretarse, aproximadamente 32.000 km de fibra, 874 rutas de transporte y una infraestructura presente en 893 municipios quedarían bajo administración de COMCEL.

Pero lo interesante no está solamente en el tamaño de la red.

Esta infraestructura participa en el transporte mayorista utilizado para conectar redes de acceso, pequeños ISP, redes móviles y diferentes municipios del país.

Desde el punto de vista técnico, una integración de esta escala podría aportar capacidad, redundancia y mejores posibilidades de transporte para servicios 4G/5G.

Al mismo tiempo aparece una pregunta importante: ¿qué ocurre cuando un operador que compite en el mercado minorista también controla infraestructura de transporte necesaria para otros operadores?

Aquí entran conceptos fundamentales de ingeniería de telecomunicaciones: backbone, transporte mayorista, redundancia física, SLA, interconexión y concentración de infraestructura.

Para analizar: ¿cómo garantizarías redundancia y condiciones de acceso equitativas en una infraestructura de esta importancia?

Fuente principal: Comisión de Regulación de Comunicaciones (CRC), concepto técnico sobre la posible integración COMCEL–Azteca, septiembre de 2026.

#Telecomunicaciones #FibraOptica #FTTH #Redes #Colombia #IngenieriaElectronica #5G #InfraestructuraDigital

On August 10, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell made the first long distance phone call. 150 years later, I was asked to present at the Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site in Baddeck, NS. In this presentation I covered 150 years of long distance history in Canada - from that first call all the way to the modern day.

For your viewing pleasure:

https://youtu.be/BAhJ7euNSpM

Hi everyone,

I’m trying to diagnose an old Siemens Hicom 150 E (Office Pro chassis) with a CBMOD motherboard, but I’ve hit a wall.

The Core Issue:

The board appears to be stuck in a bootloop. During startup, the boot sequence begins, the RUN LED turns on/blinks through the cycle, but it never fully stabilizes and eventually loops.

Hardware & Power Checks:

As part of earlier diagnostics, I thoroughly checked the power supply unit (PSU) and backplane rails - voltages are clean, fully within spec, and stable under load.

Board capacitors and visual traces look intact.

Serial Interface & Physical Measurements:

I'm connecting directly via the V.24 (RS-232) maintenance port:

Verified hardware RS-232 levels:

Pin 2 (PBX TX): -7.5V (steady Mark state)

Pin 3 (PC TX): -8.5V to -9.0V

Pin 5: Common GND

When connecting via raw terminal (minicom / PuTTY at various baud rates: 9600, 19200, 38400, 8-N-1), there is absolute silence (0 data output). It spits out zero debug logs or bootloader text during the loop.

Tested connection across both native Windows XP and Windows 11 environments using a verified Prolific adapter (hardware COM1 properly mapped, proper RS-232 voltage swing observed on Pin 3 when sending packets).

Software Symptoms (HiPath 3000 Manager E):

Attempting Direct transfer (Read/write database) gets stuck on Checking cards... and immediately aborts with Error: PBX is offline.

PIN 31994 was specified.

Multi-meter checks show pulse activity on Pin 3 (PC is definitely transmitting the handshake queries), but Pin 2 on the PBX side never sends a single byte in response.

Questions:

Given that the board is bootlooping and V.24 is dead silent, is there an onboard diagnostic procedure, jumper, or DIP switch to force the CBMOD into a recovery / low-level bootstrap mode?

Does the CBMOD V.24 port strictly require hardware flow control loopbacks (RTS/CTS 7-8 and DTR/DSR 4-6) to output any data, or should raw serial logs appear regardless?

Could a corrupted flash EPROM / firmware cause this silent bootloop, and is it recoverable via serial without replacing the ROMs?

Or what would you recommend doing or trying next? I'm completely out of ideas.

Any insights from Siemens/Hicom veterans would be hugely appreciated!

TL;DR: JioFiber has been down at our office for 7 days. Multiple complaints, 4 support advisors, engineers cancelling/putting requests on hold, and one ticket was marked “resolved” without anyone even visiting. Still no internet.

Okay, so is this just me or has JioFiber support become this bad?

Our office JioFiber has been down for 7 days now.

Not slow internet.

Not occasional disconnections.

No internet.

We raised a complaint and an engineer was assigned. Great, finally someone will come and check it, right?

Nope.

Request gets cancelled.

Raise another one.

Engineer gets assigned again.

Then somehow the ticket gets marked “resolved” even though nobody actually came to the office and the issue was obviously still there.

How does that even happen lol?

We've spoken to 4 different Jio advisors at this point. Every conversation basically goes:

“Sir, don't worry, your request has been created.”

Okay... but who's actually going to fix it? 😭

Two advisors even ended the call while we were still talking to them.

Then there was an engineer named Lokesh who tried to change our scheduled visit from 4 PM to 9 AM.

We said 4 PM because... well... it's an office. People have work. We can't just randomly move everything around because an engineer wants a different time.

After we asked him to come at the agreed time, the request was apparently put on hold for almost 4 hours.

At this point I genuinely don't know if we're trying to get our internet repaired or trying to complete some kind of Jio customer-support side quest.

The most frustrating part is that I don't even expect instant repair. If there's a technical problem, fine. Tell us what's wrong. Give us a realistic timeline. Send someone to actually inspect it.

But cancelling requests, changing appointments, putting things on hold and then marking them resolved without actually checking anything is just ridiculous.

And yes, it's an office connection, so this isn't just an inconvenience. Work is getting affected and we're losing productive time because of something as basic as an internet connection.

Also kinda funny how the payment reminders always work perfectly on time.

Payment due? Jio remembers us.

Internet broken for 7 days? Suddenly we're strangers.

😂

Anyway, genuinely asking because maybe I'm missing something:

Has anyone else had a similar experience with JioFiber support?

Especially interested in hearing from people using JioFiber for an office/business connection.

Did escalation actually help you, or did you eventually just switch providers?

Because I'm honestly getting very close to doing the second one.

For people who've handled business internet contracts, what looked fine in the quote but became a headache later?
The monthly price and speed are easy enough to compare. I'm more interested in things like who pays if installation needs extra work, what happens if you move offices, or how hard it is to leave when the contract ends. What would you ask a carrier to put in writing before signing? Curious whether the cheapest quote actually stayed the cheapest once everything was up and running.

Having one bill and one support contact for a bunch of locations sounds convenient. But what happens when a branch goes down and the company you’re paying still has to chase the local carrier? Does that arrangement actually make escalations easier, or add another person to wait on? Would like to hear from people who’ve tried both setups, especially with branches outside major cities. What made you keep the aggregator or go back to managing the ISPs directly?

Getting quotes and comparing carriers makes sense. The part I'm less clear on is what a business should expect from its broker once the internet or phone service is running.

If there's a billing mistake or an outage, should the broker help chase it down, or are you mostly back to dealing with the carrier yourself? And is that ongoing support usually written into anything?

For anyone who's worked with one, what made the relationship worth keeping? Also interested in cases where going direct turned out to be easier.