In the early days of cable service, providers encountered attackers who tried to steal service, customer data, and video content. As service offerings expanded to include broadband Internet, attacks have grown to be even more extensive, more...

Communications companies possess extensive consumer data, including financial and behavioral information. Customers subscribe to services that range from home and mobile phone service, cable, Internet, and more.

At Alden, our experts travel all over the country solving infrastructure asset management, data collection, data management and joint use issues for companies of all shapes and sizes. We see a lot of different situations, and as a result, we...

Let’s discuss something called the butterfly effect for a moment. Aside from being a decently entertaining Ashton Kutcher-led mid-2000s film, it is an actual offshoot of chaos theory that theorizes that, in short, even the smallest action can...

As we have mentioned, the field of service providers—especially jack-of-all-trades businesses who blur the lines between telecommunications, entertainment and broadband internet—is getting a little crowded. Utility poles are now packed with...

In everyday life, ESD or electrostatic discharge is a fairly harmless phenomenon. On a cool, dry day you may brush against something, creating a small electric charge that you then discharge with a little arc of electricity and a small, slightly...

Most people probably do not pay much attention to the boxes on the side of the road called remote terminals or RTs. Most probably they do not realize they house equipment and function as important extensions to telco central office locations.

We would probably say that nearly everyone “wins” in the race to connect rural locations to high-speed internet—families, children, schools, small businesses, everyone—but the FCC recently announced the names of 40 entities who will receive a...

Wrapping and shipping are a couple of the activities we do not all enjoy. In the CO world, however, these tasks such as packing up and shipping out plugs from CO (central office) to CO, RT to CO or to other facilities within a company’s system, is a...

During inventory in the world of central office (CO), our experts see all kinds of interesting situations regarding plug-in assets and other equipment inside central offices and remote terminals. Thousands of dollars worth of plugs stacked up,...

In the CO (central office) world, as well as elsewhere in the utility and telecommunications universe, there will always be specific pieces of equipment that are considered “critical”—that is, vital to operations and maintaining uninterrupted...

You could say it all started in Kansas City. In 2012, tech giant Google extended the high-speed broadband carrot to all residents of the mid-sized Kansas city, immediately sparking a race to become the second—and third and fourth—metro area to be...

Think back to childhood. It is winter and the air is crisp and dry. You put on your thick wool socks, and with all your might, rub your feet back and forth across carpeting in your parents’ living room. You reach out with one tingling finger...

It is Halloween, and here on the Alden Joint Use Communications blog, we are thinking about some scary stuff. Are we having nightmares about zombies? Seeing witches around every corner? Hearing ghosts rustle down the hall? No.

The horrors on our...

In the telecom industry, some equipment is critical to maintaining normal operations. Inside a good deal of that equipment, circuitry packs called “plugs or plug-ins” make up the puzzle pieces that connect our calls and make communication...

Today begins a recurring series on inside plant (ISP) telecommunications industry issues, equipment and central office organization, starting with a primer on one of the most important links in the call chain: the central office itself. Enjoy!

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Imagine this scenario: your asset inventory is complete. Min/max levels for spare equipment have been calculated, enough critical assets are available and easily locatable on the shelves, equipment for repair has been sent out, and broken and...

It is up to 100 times faster than traditional broadband, already available to corporate and institutional customers around the U.S., and is coming to homes in a mid-sized city near you. What is it? Gigabit broadband service. This month,...

Everywhere you look, we are more and more connected. Our televisions stream high-definition content into our living rooms. Our gaming devices allow real-time play with competitors around the world. Our music comes from the cloud, not a stack of...

Utility poles are visible, tangible assets—40 feet of hard to forget wood towering above ground. Exposed and often installed in remote areas, it is easy to imagine bootleg attachers finding their way onto them, and creating potential violations...

In the age of streaming video and multi-player online games, the always-on connectivity and speed of broadband Internet at home is becoming the norm for most people in the U.S. Notice we said “most.” According to AOL, more than 2.5 million people...

They may not be as visible as the typical utility pole, but underground vaults are a vital—and often overlooked—link in the utility service chain.

We may walk over them every day, but it does not pay to neglect them. For example, two major cities...

You may not have heard much about it, but in April of 2013, someone slipped into an underground vault near a busy freeway in California and cut a few telephone cables. Half an hour later, snipers began firing on a nearby electrical substation, ...

A sniper opened fire on a California substation on a dark night in April of 2013, however, the story began sometime earlier in an underground vault, where telephone lines were cut hours before the substation was fired upon. While grid security in...

In the beginning, in the great wide-open spaces of America, there were only limited, analog entertainment options. Television stations sent signals that were picked up by rooftop antennae, pointed toward the metropolitan meccas. Some homes—those...

Having up-to-date asset inventory data is important for many reasons. Current, accurate data can be used to document ownership, verify your inventory is in working order, and ensure the reliability of your service. Having current inventory data...