PHANTOM’S FINAL WORD

My Busted Record

By The PHANTOM – Heck, 5G is a more bandwidth-efficient technology for wireless data, with some changes in protocol to optimize speed and use of that bandwidth.

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Using the Bigger Shoehorn!

By The PHANTOM – Last quarter we talked about the bigger shoehorn of coherent fiber optics as one way to get more out of fiber we already have. You’ll recall (or maybe won’t recall) the simple definition my small brain uses, that we are treating fiber optics more like the way we treat RF-based signals. Rather than simple off-on modulation of the light (akin to the century old RF technique of code transmission), we can change the light carrier in ways that let us get more information through.

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Toward a Bigger Shoehorn!

By the PHANTOM – So whatzit mean? In my deranged way, I see it as handling optics more like how we handle RF transmission of data. You use a really good laser that has coherent output—it outputs energy continuously and on one frequency.

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The Build Impossible

By the PHANTOM – Man, and you think you got it tough? Me, I really got it tough, working in this ever-changing industry with no sense of how to deal with a haunt in their midst. But how about building an all-fiber system in a sparsely populated area where it is cold.

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UHDTV — Last Part

By the PHANTOM – If you want to look at the ATSC-3 conversion, get yourself a TV that can tune ATSC-3 as well as ATSC-1. Or if you’re cheap like The Phantom

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UHDTV

By the PHANTOM – Broadcasters are in a different situation from us. That difference arises from the way that economics work in their part of the infrastructure. Broadcasters own nothing in the viewers’ homes.

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Competition — Again

By the PHANTOM – Now any decent marketing type will tell you that it is a whole lot cheaper to keep a customer than it is to acquire a new one. The reason is that you spend so much moolah on getting a new customer — advertising, installation, introductory discounts, and so on ad nauseam.

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Boy Did I Get a Wrong Number!

By The Phantom – That was the name of this Bob Hope flick of the mid-’60s, in which Bob calls his wife on the phone, but accidentally gets a French movie star who has escaped to the U.S. As only Hope can do it, one thing leads to another and Hope finds himself in a hilarious pickle.

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 Now Where Was I? (Part 2)

Phantom – Guess I’d better find another industry to haunt if the phantom bosses decide to put me back into the programming business. Lemme think: How did I pull off the switch from that French opera house gig to this cable gig?

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