The Telecom Quartet

 

Folio II     The Engineering Culture or Culture Engineer?

 

I kept my promise and resurrected from the self- declared death as outlined in first folio. Mr. TRX has been very hopeful about our future and his next generation and told me a secret. I have written that secret at the Subject line itself because I know, my friends, you don’t like secrets. Problems, yes, Trouble – shoot it, but secrets and puzzles you don’t like at all. Unfortunately, Mr. TRX has also entrusted me with the responsibility of being frank with you and tell some unpleasant facts which are little complex and beyond our scope. You will immediately ask, if it is beyond our scope, why at all bother to talk about this with us? The answer is simple – we have to be beyond our scope. The explorations of possibilities (we need to learn to distinguish between solutions and possibilities, the solution-fixative people that we are).

 

We need to fix some rules to make our discussion clear even though the subject is complex, let me warn you. I also guarantee that some issues will not be understood at all. None did fully. So don’t bother and don’t get into frenzy. These set of rules will be maintained throughout unless explicitly stated.

 

Rule I: Whenever you hear the word technology, please remind yourself that it is not only about machines and system, codes and plans, comfort and understanding but something mysteriously connected with subjects like economics, history, social studies, civics, languages, painting, in short all the subjects that you might have neglected during your studies. You may be the last person who has any comprehensive idea about it. So be watchful.

 

Rule II: Discipline yourself in coming out of the fixation that there is some fundamentally different value in technical work and non-technical work. The only fundamental is that: you are a human being at work.

 

Rule III:  Learn the art of talking more with people who are not engineers in non-engineering subjects without feeling any complex, either way.

 

And the last one for time-being

 

Rule IV: The PCM rule and WWW rule. PCM means Price, Cost and Market and WWW means who (pays the Cost), whom (the customer) and Where (the Market). You need to be very flexible in dealing with these Rules and be clear about the fact that you exist as an engineer not because lots of your loving machines and systems exist near you but because of the PCM & WWW rules. That is enough for time being.

 

The Promising Confusion

 

As we promised we would go from known to unknown. Have you ever wondered something like this: Is there any relation between the price of an egg and a telephone call? Possibly not.

 

Have you ever thought about this fact that even though there may be millions of eggs per day laid by chickens all over the world but each egg has a price whereas a single email is almost free? Highly likely that you did never think about it. No Problem. None did. It is this mystery that none thought about it but from end to finish but it works. This is called the Invisible Hand and this concept is at the heart of one of the most enduring economic theories. Lesson: The real world is not an engineering world. It also works and wonderfully well too.

 

Have you ever wondered this fact that the hen never asked for money for a single egg all throughout history but we have to pay the price? Also, considering our voices as like eggs which we lay at the receiver is charged by the phone company. Is it fair? Are you not like those hens who are producing eggs (like we are speaking, our words) and not getting paid whereas you are being charged. Do you find a great confusion arising. Well, it is a sign of health and proves that you are in good shape.

 

Have you ever wondered why fibre came later than co-axial cable and not the other way round? [Perhaps yes and you might have been easy by mumbling – technological progress. Yes but that does not answer why. It is like answering the question Why does a bird fly? Answer Birds are meant to fly. 

 

Given a choice of doing a Project on Cost Saving to the Company by Outsourcing or Designing a MPLS driven multi-platform IP-TV with Wi-FI access with VBR  , which  one would you prefer and why ?

 

If you have the patience of coming upto so far with a raging unrest and discomfort, you are positive. If not, you are not a true communication engineer. But before you let your disgust and discomfort overtake you, think again about the last sentence of Mr. TRX, his valediction to me and perhaps to all of us – People don’t understand our value. I think, we need to do something about it. '

 

OK, thanks, you have changed your mind. Please keep your cigarettes and lighter nearby if you are a smoker. Do you need to go to the toilet? OK ? Drink water or have little snacks if you please. I am preparing myself for a long discussion and I want your complete attention and little bit of soul-searching. It will not take more than a single page and then we will close. Let me give you a warning: What we are going to discuss now can be little sensitive affair. So post-pone your reaction a little bit and then we can have a debate.

 

The fact of we all being engineer has something to do with the time we live and work. Now this time has not just come. It has something behind it and so there are engineers, now dead having served telecom and humanity- both. We are doing the same. There is nothing absolutely new or novel about things we are doing. We are part of a tradition and since we all neglected history reading in our schooldays, we are too easy to be convinced that this high technological progress has just chosen us. This is false. We need to have a historical perspective of things and then you can compare things. Past is the only place where we can compare because future never is.

 

In one way, our very function of being a communication engineer is not a mere accident even though it may apparently seem so. We have exercised a career option consciously or unconsciously and we are doing the job because we have decided either by force or voluntarily that all other way we could have done any other is job is less attractive to us. This is the fundamental aspect of economics and is shorthanded by two terms – opportunity cost and incentive. You are  an engineer not only because you loved engineering but also because you are living in this present economic cycle. Being a cycle it changes and so changes our fate. We need to get accustomed to the great economic fabric which holds and influences us. Market is like the cloth and Cost is like threads and stitch in this fabric. We are floating in this piece of cloth, held by the support of Cost. You exist for the Company because you have managed to justify your cost in some way.

 

Internet is not only a technology. It is influencing the very Cloth mentioned. Since it has got something to do with Cost, it ceases to be only a technological issue and sooner or later manifests itself as something very tangible: your relevance.

 

Cost of a Telephone Call

 

Cost of a telephone call – it is a very complex affair. It is a concept which (not money. It is only convenient to measure it in terms of money unit) reflects every activity, every bit of salary of engineers and others, every paise that has been paid for the equipment, every paise that has been wasted in terms of buying wrong equipment etc  to make that telephone call. It is an idea. But it is a very powerful idea. It is powerful because it is so general and abstract. It gives us an insight into this fact that depending on different activity, different equipment, different engineers, cost of the same telephone call may vary. It works other way also. As soon as we understand that somebody can make cost of a telephone call different, there is a possibility that there is a different activity, a different possibility that has become reality. Cost in this way is the search for possibilities and extends in all industries. Now so far, we have been in monopoly where we would happen to find one cost and in reciprocation - us. Liberalization of our industry has brought different costs in the marketplace and different people are exploring different possibilities to arrive at a different cost. So there are various possibilities to choose. This is the release of Competitive Forces. Now, since it becomes a matter of possibilities for a company to project cost, it is not only technology but everything the company does and thinks come into picture. Cost in this way is a test to find out the existence of possibilities. So we exist not because we are good technically is only half the story – our existence as what we are in our profession has deep relation with what others are doing. Our company does not love us; it loves the loving cost we bring for it.  The subject of economics deals with these issues but we never thought of having anything to do with economics, we were after all, technical people!

 

We need to change our collective habitat from a techno-centric universe to a cost-centric universe. Our previous generation‘s labour has brought us into a situation where our machines are becoming more intelligent and nicer. They don’t require as much as intervention as they required earlier. They require a different kind of intervention and this is not as simple as that of the art of following manuals. 

 

 Some of us would be exasperated by the views expressed as we all are passionate about our job. Justifiably so and it is true that we are finding ourselves quite at a loss while we try to think of future. In one way, our achievement has become our cause for concern and anxiety. We have served from dots to dashes to this day and we find challenges that ask for fundamental shift in the way we look at the profession and industry. A heavy anxiety is within each one of us. No one knows for sure and it is good that no one can. We are learning our first lesson in coping with uncertainties and anxiety which other people experienced earlier and reinvented themselves. 

 

I thank you for your patience and in the next Folio, we will be more cheerful and we can have a look back at our long road traveled and from there we would find our those learnings to design something for the future. We will pay our tribute to the Indian Telecom Professionals – Let us praise Great Men