 | Issue: | North America I 2014 |
| Article no.: | 9 | |
| Topic: | ZetaMan | |
| Author: | Ms. Cheri Beranek | |
| Title: | President & CEO | |
| Organisation: | Clearfield Inc. | |
| PDF size: | 366KB |
About author
Clearfield, Inc. President and CEO Cheri Beranek is a founding member of the company. She is considered a visionary in the telecommunications networking industry, and has extensive leadership experience in the field of emerging high-tech growth companies. In July 2003, she joined APA Enterprises as President of its subsidiary APA Cables & Networks. In June 2007, she was appointed President and CEO. Previously, Ms. Beranek served as President of Americable, for which she had previously been its Chief Operating Officer. Throughout her career, Ms. Beranek has held a variety of leadership positions with emerging high-growth technology companies, including Transition Networks, Tricord Systems; and Digi International. She also has extensive non-profit experience including: the City of Fargo, the Metropolitan Planning Commission of Fargo/Moorhead, and North Dakota State University (NDSU).
Ms. Beranek has been recognized with numerous awards, including the 2012 Women in Wireline from Fierce Telecom, 2012 regional finalist for Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year, Stevie Awards for Business in 2011 as a finalist for Best Executive for non-services businesses and the 2009 Turn-Around of the Year, as well as the Twin Cities Business Journal’s Industry Leader Award in 2009 and Women to Watch award in 2004.
Cheri has a Bachelor of Science from Southwest Minnesota State University and a Masters from North Dakota State University.
Article abstract
In the ZettaByte era, ZetaMen will roam the earth. They are pioneers, thinking for themselves. They will have to, if they wish to connect broadband to far-out places or impossible to reach highly urban locations. If broadband installation is not commercially viable, a rural co-operative of locals will make it happen, own it and manage it themselves – it will be simple enough to maintain by then. Perhaps we are all going to own the wire that comes to our door…
Full Article
The Zetabyte era – it sounds high tech and low touch, but in reality, it will be anything but. Rather, the Zetabyte era will be more like the time of the Mountain Man – a time of ruggedized individualism and self-reliance. Growing up, we all saw movies of the Grizzly Adams types – the early pioneer who went out without the “burden” of a family, but expected to do it all himself. While Grizzly Adams was a fictional character, the principles taught through his character hold true.
The Zetabyte Man (or woman) won’t wait for someone to do it for him, but thanks not only to the speed of communication, but also to the ease of communication, will move the mountain to keep progress moving forward. Although not requiring superhuman strength, nor other super hero capabilities, our ZetaMan will carry the same confidence of the Mountain Man of old.
ZetaMan begins at the fundamentals – the network itself. The Zetabyte era will be dependent upon optical fiber, as it is the future of all communication and the only true limitless transport medium. Today there is still frustration about getting optical fiber to reach the home, or business or up the cell tower.
We’ve worked with the early ‘mountain men’ of optical fiber. These pioneers knew what they wanted and weren’t afraid to go figure it out as they went along. Back in 2001, a telephone firm in Bemidji, a northern Minnesota town, named appropriately “Paul Bunyan Telephone”, wanted to extend some of the fiber that was delivered from the hey-day of the .com craze. We placed large cabinets, stuffed with central office panels that were never meant for the outside plant, and ‘ruggedized’ the contents. While there were some sleepless nights during that first winter, when temperatures plummeted to -20 degrees Fahrenheit (and colder), those boxes are still running today with high bandwidth delivered to the customer.
Later, other mountain men from the south, wanted to do the same thing. By then, we had figured out how to downsize the cabinet size, but weren’t yet prepared for the environmental challenges of sea-salt. Nothing lost – nothing gained. A few tweaks on the paint and the metal selection, and all was well. Mountain men thrive on trial and error.
There are excuses on the cost or the environmental challenges. Not unlike the opponents of the first transcontinental railroad, opponents of ubiquitous broadband, put up barriers with their excuses. We’ve lost our ruggedness and independence and cry out for someone to do it for us. However, technology companies will ease this burden and deliver products that enable fiber to be installed in projects previously not viable, economically or environmentally. As a result, ZetaMan will own his own fiber. Just like today, you might own your own sprinkler system to water your lawn, ZetaMan will own the optical transport into his home.
Wait, you say, the city (or other government entity) owns the water lines that come to your property for your sprinkler system to access that water. Similar, ZetaMan will see the re-emergence of cooperative ownership. Quoting Grizzly Adams, “Well, when you come to think about it, all that a person has is other folks. I reckon there’s a lot of folks in these parts that could use a helping hand”.
It was that helping hand that brought electricity and telephone service. Groups of people with a capitalist heart, formed an alliance to work together to get what they wanted. Rather than wait for the government to offer a hand-out, they made it happen for themselves. We’re working with a very rural county today to bring broadband to every farm. This is an area where there isn’t a single stoplight in the community identified as the county seat. These farmers and local businessmen have created the business plan to develop a telecom cooperative that will allow them to take responsibilities for their futures and own their own broadband network. In pockets like this today, early ZetaMen are forming cooperative alliances to build their networks. This business plan has proved viable for hundreds of years and will grow in importance through the Zetabyte era.
Achieving this level of independence will happen, because technology companies in the ZetaByte era will deliver products that don’t require high-skill to install. Tomorrow’s more technology-driven appliances, the internet of things, as it is called, will in some cases raise the technical prowess of the professionals that service them, but tomorrow’s infrastructure will be served by the ZetaMan. ZetaMan will be a do-it-yourself’er and a handy-man. Technology infrastructure will not be a commodity, but it will be transparent. One will not recognize when you move from Wi-Fi to cell to even landline, because networks must also be heterogeneous, meeting the needs of the application.
Since the ZetaMan is in charge, he will dictate aesthetics. Today, environmental groups are getting their voices heard. They don’t want to see telecommunications cabinets and overhead wires littering the landscape. In some locations, including large metropolitan markets in California and elsewhere, these protests have prevented the construction of broadband services. For the Zeta era, infrastructure will be small, buried, and reliable.
Distributed Antenna Service (DAS) is an exciting technology that’s opening the door to the Zeta era as it allows for greater usage and bandwidth transfer in heavily populated metro areas. Early on, the challenge was getting fiber to the antenna sites as they are commonly situated in or on structures that are encased in concrete. Early pioneers in the process knew traditional trenching as an expensive and labor-intensive process. Their traditional method of digging a one foot wide trench, placing a two to four inch conduit, backfilling with concrete and then repaving wouldn’t make it in the Zeta era. Imagine closing a lane of traffic in downtown Chicago for a week?
In the Zeta era micro-trenching (slot cutting) will become the norm. In these environments, a microduct from an existing manhole will be run and placing a fiber from the manhole splice into the DAS equipment on streetlight poles.
Bringing fiber to a cell tower is similar. While new construction is common for a free-standing tower, when a cell tower is on the rooftop of an existing structure, new construction wouldn’t be possible. The ZetaMan looks at problems differently – why not develop technology that reinforces what’s already there. On a recent job, the cell site was on top of a ten story building with a one inch conduit running down from the rooftop to an equipment room in the basement. The connection point for the local telco was an additional 450 feet away in a manhole. This installation had been on hold for three years because of routing problems and the costs associated with core drilling 10 floors and installing a new conduit from which to pull fiber. Using pushable fiber and ruggedized microduct as an alternative, we were able to accomplish placing both the ruggedized microduct and pushing the fiber in just about 8 hrs.
ZetaMan will think for himself and do for himself. The future is usually best understood through the past. For as Eleanor Roosevelt said, “Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one.”
