![straints of cost, time, and quality. It portrays a disciplined approach to integrate various
data elements describing the project and draw a coherent picture of its status to guide de-
cisions. Product management, in contrast, is related to all aspects of a product line includ-
ing life-cycle management of existing products as well as the development of new prod-
ucts to achieve a competitive advantage [Gorchels, 2003].
Historically, the discipline of project management was applied first in construction,
then in large government projects such as defense, as well as in the chemical and phar-
maceutical industries. Its application expanded later to other fields such as software de-
velopment and telecommunications. In the case of software development, it was ob-
served that 15–25% of all projects failed to complete and that there was great
dissatisfaction with the quality, cost, or timeliness of those that did complete. This has
spurred the adoption of project management in the conduct of software projects as a
way to bring runaway processes under control. Likewise, the increased interest in for-
mal project management techniques in telecommunication services can be attributed to
several factors. Changes in the regulatory regime have imposed the unbundling of many
telecommunication services into their individual constituents, while several new tech-
nologies have become available to service providers. This combination of regulatory
and technological changes has led to an increase in the number of potential suppliers as
well as candidate solutions. The multiplicity of choices at each level of the service hier-
archy (infrastructure, network, application, content) has made the interactions among
vendors, sponsors, and customers extremely complex, especially when some of the op-
erational tasks are outsourced. Finally, competitive pressures are forcing service compa-
nies to deliver their products faster, with higher quality and with lower cost. Conducting
successful projects in such a dynamic and risky environment requires the discipline that
formal project management fosters.
The current architecture of telecommunication services is shown in Figure 1.1. An in-
frastructure provider is responsible for making transmission bandwidth (fiber cables, un-
dersea cables, satellites, etc.) available. A network provider builds, operates, and main-
tains the network elements and infrastructure. The service provider buys network services
from a network provider and then resells them to end-users, other service providers, and
content providers. The service provider can be an Internet service provider (ISP), a
provider of disaster recovery or a storage area network (SAN) provider, a call center oper-
ator, a web host, and so on. The content provider is responsible for content creation and
can consolidate catalogs (e.g., directory services), store voice messages, provide answer-
ing services (call centers), or provide digital certificates. Finally, among the functions of
the content manager would be managing customer relationship, packaging contents from
several content providers, facilitating electronic payments, acting an exchange or a mar-
ket place for electronic commerce, storing content, and so on. Clearly, many independent
entities have to cooperate to integrate their particular subcomponent in an end-to-end ser-
vice offer. Furthermore, the planning and development of infrastructure projects can last
several years and could involve up to several thousand persons from many suppliers. Pro-
ject management techniques are needed to prevent the fragmentation that may plague
large-scale engineering projects and to ensure that [Bergren et al., 2001]:
앫 The activities of the various parties remain coordinated without unnecessary rigidi-
ty or bureaucracy.
앫 The project activities remain relevant through controlled of the changes to the tech-
nical and quality requirements to track the environment or the customer needs.
2 PROJECTS IN TELECOMMUNICATION SERVICES](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1068595-250601143224-5ff8f869/85/Managing-Projects-In-Telecommunication-Services-1st-Edition-Mostafa-Hashem-Sherif-26-320.jpg)
![works as well as the local access networks of the various telephone companies
within and outside the United States. Its principal activity is to manage 50 million
customer relationships through its customer care systems [Martin, 2005, p. 142].
앫 Call-back operators are another example of service providers. When the cost of a
call from Country A to Country B is higher than the cost of a call in the opposite di-
rection, callers from the first country can reduce their bill by asking their correspon-
dent to initiate the call. This was turned into a business by having an agency in
Country B offering the service for a fee to those that have an account with it
[Wheatley, 1999, pp. 411–412].
앫 In the data area, @Home was an ISP created by cable companies to offer broadband
access to the Internet over local cables in exchange of a share of its revenues. The
content it distributed was stored in 25 regional data centers connected through a
backbone network provided by the long-distance companies.
앫 Vonage and AT&T’s CallVantageSM
service offers of telephony over IP networks
are services that are offered over the broadband connections of cable companies. In
addition, the network provider that offers IP connectivity can be different than the
service provider. This allows services such as virtual phone numbers whereby in-
coming calls can be routed over IP connections anywhere in the world. Thus, peo-
ple can make an international call with the price of a local call.
Virtual companies may even restrict themselves to customer management and marketing,
leaving to their suppliers all other technical aspects of the service. The quality of the ser-
vice in terms of availability or billing accuracy becomes highly dependent on the network
operator. New services such as electronic commerce or geolocalization must fit within an
environment that already exists. However, such a business model is vulnerable to the sup-
pliers’ cooperation and decision not to offer competing services using the physical and
network management infrastructure that they are leasing.
Contribution of Project Management
As discussed above, project management is becoming essential for a more efficient ser-
vice delivery process that minimizes the risks of cost overruns or schedule slippages and
increases the chances of success. In particular, project management aids in assessing the
value of the project implementation and providing proactive guidance on the conduct of
the implementation with objective metrics to answer the following questions [Thorp,
1998, pp. 51–52]:
1. Are we doing the right things?
2. Are we doing them the right way?
3. Are we getting them done well?
4. Are we getting the benefits?
In other words, project management supplies tools to do the following:
앫 Circumscribe the scope of the project and any changes to that scope.
앫 Define and maintain communication links across organizational and occupational
boundaries.
4 PROJECTS IN TELECOMMUNICATION SERVICES](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1068595-250601143224-5ff8f869/85/Managing-Projects-In-Telecommunication-Services-1st-Edition-Mostafa-Hashem-Sherif-28-320.jpg)
![storage networks. The equipment includes multiplexers, cross-connect, routing and
switching equipment, power systems, and security systems such as intrusion detection
systems. In some cases, such as managed services, customer premise equipment will be
included. The networks may vary in complexity, size, the technologies used and their in-
teraction with each other, their topology, and so on. Innovations at the product level pro-
vide media excitement and stimulate enthusiasm for the diffusion of technology. Howev-
er, from a service viewpoint, what counts is the ability to deliver and maintain the quality
of the end-to-end service.
The operation support systems component relates to the various network element man-
agement systems as well as systems used for provisioning, accounting, security, billing,
and so on. This component is essential for development, deployment and maintenance of
high-quality network-based services using shared facilities, such as for public networks. It
should be noted that these systems are less important in the case of private and enterprise
networks.
The methods and procedures are routines to streamline the many tasks needed for (a)
the installation of equipment, (b) the engineering of the network, (c) managing the main-
tenance and repair operations, and (d) the customer support functions. It is true that the
various service providers share more or less the same technology and have similar support
systems; furthermore, standardization is essential to ensure end-to-end connectivity and
to reduce the complexity of service management. Nevertheless, the distinctive advantage
of any service provider resides in is capacity to attract and retain customers and to support
growth to reach profitability. In other words, the more the technology is standardized, the
more important is the service delivery process in the market success of telecommunica-
tion services providers [Ward, 1998].
Finally, the contents and applications refer to content creation (e.g., customer relations
management, disaster recovery, electronic data interchange, etc.) or the packaging or con-
solidation of contents from several sources. This content can be news, movies, voice mail,
web hosting, weather reports or stock price, voice messaging, taxi services, catalogs, cer-
tificate management for electronic commerce, and so on. This area is typically outside the
focus of network operators or service providers, even though the availability of content is
essential for the success of data telecommunication services. For example, to stimulate
the growth of some telecommunication services, such as i-mode of NTT DoCoMo or the
older Minitel of France Telecom, the network operator used its direct relationship with
the end-user to act as an intermediary for content providers—that is, as a distributor and
to collect payments. In that role, the operators added the amount due to the content
provider to their monthly bills. With the growth of mass markets for the exchange of dig-
ital pictures and music files through peer-to-peer sharing as well as the widespread usage
of mobile camera-phones, end-users can now act as content providers, like they were in
traditional telephony.
The issues related to the management of content generation, particularly when it
touches intellectual property rights, will not be considered in this book.
CATEGORIES OF PROJECTS IN TELECOMMUNICATION SERVICES
Telecommunication services vary according to several factors. These include the nature
of the network used (public, private, or virtual private), the target market (consumer, busi-
ness, government, military, emergency services, etc.), the nature of the installation (per-
6 PROJECTS IN TELECOMMUNICATION SERVICES](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1068595-250601143224-5ff8f869/85/Managing-Projects-In-Telecommunication-Services-1st-Edition-Mostafa-Hashem-Sherif-30-320.jpg)
![manent or temporary), or the type of services (voice, entertainment, mission critical appli-
cations, etc.). To illustrate the characteristics of telecommunication projects in the area of
services, let us consider the following examples
1. Upgrading the capabilities to an existing public network
2. Establishment of specialized business networks
3. Installation and dismantling of temporary networks
Upgrades of Public Networks
This category of projects relates to the replacement of obsolete technology, the deploy-
ment of a new service, and the enrichment of an existing service with new features, appli-
cations, or capabilities. The origin of these improvements may be new regulations, capac-
ity growth to meet customer’s demands, or the emergence of new technologies. Because
these projects affect the general public, the challenge that faces network operators is to
minimize disruptions to the existing services—that is, preserving a 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-
a-week operation even when an obsolete technology is being replaced.
앫 Digital telephony (switching and transmission) replaced analog equipment transpar-
ently. Another example is the replacement of the processor of all the 135 4ESS
switches in the AT&T voice network during the 1990s without downtime or service
interruption [Golinski and Rutkowski, 1997].
앫 Examples for capacity expansion include the addition of new area codes or the
changing of the numbering schemes to 10 digits in many countries, the migration of
existing traffic to different transmission facilities such as a new undersea cable or
dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) equipment, the expansion of
billing systems, and so on.
앫 Examples related to the introduction of new services include the addition of the toll-
free (800) numbers, call forwarding, incoming call number identification, and so
on.
앫 Examples on the effects of regulations on new telecommunication services include
local number portability—that is, the capability to retain telephone numbers even
after changing operators, the capability of locating the origin of an emergency call
from a mobile phone, and so on.
Some projects may be related to the internal processes of the network such as changing to
a more flexible billing system, providing on-line billing, and so on. For example, to retain
its customers and increase their satisfaction, a service company may introduce a more
granular rating engine to take into account fractions of a minute in the billing (the so-
called “less-than-one minute billing”), even though this granularity would cause a direct
reduction in revenue. In this case, the hope is that customer retention would offset the loss
of revenues over the longer term [Goodpasture, 2002, p. 52].
Investment in public telecommunication falls in the same category of infrastructure de-
velopment such as roads, railways, water and electricity and other public services. All of
them are prerequisites for economic development and for improving the quality of life.
Telecommunication services are also important because they complement other structures
for communication such as postal service and travel. Given the three main dimensions of
CATEGORIES OF PROJECTS IN TELECOMMUNICATION SERVICES 7](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1068595-250601143224-5ff8f869/85/Managing-Projects-In-Telecommunication-Services-1st-Edition-Mostafa-Hashem-Sherif-31-320.jpg)
![a project (time, cost and quality or scope), the goals of projects in public networks are
typically in the domain of quality of service. The main factors that govern projects in pub-
lic networks are [United Nations, 1987]:
앫 Level and distribution of income
앫 Industrial and technological level
앫 Economic growth rates
앫 Demographic structure (population, size, age structure, number of households, pat-
terns of urbanization, mobility, etc.)
앫 Regulation
앫 Culture
Establishment of Specialized Business Networks
Private networks are used by enterprises or government entities for their internal commu-
nication. A private network can be also used by a federation of enterprises such as the net-
works used that link auto manufacturers with their suppliers. The scope of some of these
projects may be restricted to a given building or campus, but may also encompass a feder-
ation of enterprises. For example, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial
Telecommunications (SWIFT)—established in 1987 by 239 banks in 15 countries—has
its own private network to relay the interbank messages related to international fund
transfers.
The notion of the “tipping of network coalition” due to Professor Eli Noam provides a
good way to explain the relation between public and private networks. A telecommunica-
tion network is a cost-sharing arrangement among several users to meet their communica-
tion needs. Initially, external subsidies sustain the growth of the network until it becomes
large enough to attract subscribers willing to join to benefit from the networking effect
because the cost per subscriber decreases as their number increases. At a certain network
size, however, some potential users will add more cost than their contribution to the value
of the networking arrangement, because their specific requirements are not economic to
meet (e.g., remote locations, peculiar security arrangements, etc.). When this happens, the
network expansion stops and—provided that the technology is ready and the regulations
are favorable—those who could not join will band together to form other networking as-
sociations [Noam, 1992, pp. 26–42]. This explains why cost is the main consideration in
private networks unless they transport mission-critical traffic, in which case quality re-
mains the most valuable attribute.
Private networks are useful when the industry is organized in a tiered fashion such as
the global automotive industry, which is dominated by a small number of integrating
firms (General Motors, Ford, DaimlerChrysler, etc.) and a three-tier chain of suppliers as
shown in Figure 1.3. The hundreds of suppliers that form the first tier use the products
from the second tier, which numbers around 5000. The third tier consists of about 50,000
suppliers. As a consequence, the European automobile manufacturers have established a
network called ODETTE for the exchange of information between suppliers and car man-
ufacturers. Similarly, the Automotive Network eXchange (ANX®
) is the network of the
Automotive Industry Action Group (AAIG) (http://www.aiag.org) to link auto manufac-
turers with their suppliers in the United States.
The ANX is a virtual network in the sense that each participant can manage their part
of the network and that several suppliers participate in building the connectivity. As a
8 PROJECTS IN TELECOMMUNICATION SERVICES](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1068595-250601143224-5ff8f869/85/Managing-Projects-In-Telecommunication-Services-1st-Edition-Mostafa-Hashem-Sherif-32-320.jpg)
![Temporary Networks
Temporary telecommunication installations consist of several networks for voice, data, or
video associated with specific events such as major international conferences, global
sporting events (e.g., the World Cup for soccer), or relief operations. The basic constraint
in these projects is that the network must be operational at a date that is absolutely fixed.
This means that it is possible to change either the scope of the project, the quality of the
operation, the cost of the operation, or all of them. In the Athens Olympic Games of 2004,
the Tetra (Terrestrial Trunked Radio) network for the security forces (police, coastguard,
and emergency services) had to be installed sufficiently in advance to allow for the train-
ing of the security forces. To meet that date, Motorola had to assume the risk of rolling
out the network before the contract was signed [Hope, 2003].
The size of such networks can be very huge. During the Hajj season (pilgrimage of
Muslims to Mecca), the network load reached about 1.3 million telephone calls per day in
2001, with about half of them placed over international lines. For the Olympics Games,
the typical call load hovers around 12 million telephone calls. International communica-
tions increase by about 20–30%, with most of the increase after the opening ceremony. It
is similarly observed that the cellular phone usage usually peaks during the opening cere-
mony. Peaks to individual countries depend on gold medal performance and can exceed
100% of the total capacity. For illustration, Table 1.1 contains statistics for the evolution
of the logistics needed during successive Summer Olympics between 1988 and 2000
[Verveer, 2001].
The main purpose of temporary networks is to provide access to other networks and to
furnish timely information to the participants in the event in question (e.g., weather infor-
mation, press conferences, meetings, press information systems, etc.) through a variety of
access points (fixed-wire, mobile, radio, TV, satellite, etc.) and to connect them to the
outside world. These projects have an absolute end-date that must be met at any cost (in-
cluding sacrificing some functionalities).
The project tasks cover planning, installation, deployment, operation, and, finally, dis-
mantling. Installation of temporary networks includes defining the following:
1. A numbering and addressing plan.
2. A frequency plan for radio, satellite, or wireless communications.
3. A network plan with redundancy through multiple routes, dual homing to avoid sin-
gle point of failures, power backups, and so on.
4. Management of operations including customer support through call centers and
messaging centers, network care systems to detect troubles, and the integration with
10 PROJECTS IN TELECOMMUNICATION SERVICES
Table 1.1 Evolution of the Overall Logistics for the Summer Olympics 1988–2000 [Verveer, 2001]
Seoul 1988 Barcelona 1992 Atlanta 1996 Sydney 2000
Athletes: 9,627 9,905 10,630 11,116
Press: 4,930 4,880 5,954 5,300
Radio and TV: 10,360 11,433 13,954 14,292
Ticket sold: 3,306,000 3,812,000 8,384,290 7,000,000
Number of events: 237 257 271 300
Countries broadcasting: 160 193 214 220
Number of sports: 23 25 26 28](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1068595-250601143224-5ff8f869/85/Managing-Projects-In-Telecommunication-Services-1st-Edition-Mostafa-Hashem-Sherif-34-320.jpg)
![chitecture. They also establish the financial and accounting procedures among the various
partners and the procedures to be used for the procurement, installation, testing, and com-
missioning of terminal equipment.
A typical service provider assumes more roles than a reseller. A resale situation is a mar-
keting arrangement whereby the reseller acts as the intermediary between the customer and
the service provider; that is, it assumes most or all of the customer-facing functions (sales,
billing, collection, etc,). One reason for such an arrangement would be to extend customer
services to a different linguistic group or to overcome sale force limitation. A service
provider, in contrast, fulfills some basic functional needs that the unbundling of telecom-
munication services has uncovered by bringing to the surface issues that were once internal
to each telecommunications operator. Consider, for illustration, a disaster recovery service.
Here, the service provider offers recovery facilities by replicating the customer’s data cen-
ters and rents the necessary infrastructure from the network provider. The network
provider, in turn, designs a network configuration with preassigned (but inactive) backup
ports and access circuits for each customer’s data center. The infrastructure provider may
own the access circuits. However, it is the end-customer that designates which circuits will
be activated to ensure that mission critical applications are minimally affected by the fail-
ure. Activation of the disaster recovery plan is triggered when the customer reports to the
service provider a site failure and requests reconfiguration. The disaster recovery service
provider, in turn, calls the infrastructure network provider to effect the change.
Thus, in a world defined by technology change, unbundling of services, and deregula-
tions, in addition to the ambitions to achieve global connectivity as quickly as possible,
hybrid service arrangements abound, with parts provided by any different number of sup-
pliers using many technologies.
Internal Interfaces. Sales of telecommunications service begin with an initial cus-
tomer contact or inquiry and conclude with a signed contract and the hand-off to the or-
dering and provisioning organizations. This process involves the customer, the sales
team, and the capacity management team. The processes and systems used to support ser-
vice establishment for public data networks, which are illustrated in Figure 1.4, are very
similar to those used in traditional telephony [Rey, 1983, p. 374].
It is possible to group the functions needed for service delivery into six aspects [Ward,
1998, pp. 97–100]:
1. Acquisitions and Sales. This is a function that addresses all the activities associated
with the acquisition of new customers. It includes lead generation, prequalification,
proposal development, pricing, and contract preparation.
2. Order Entry/Order Handling. This is a function that includes the tasks associated
with converting the request for service into a firm order. This includes finalizing
the design details including firm order confirmation and order tracking and archiv-
ing.
3. Provisioning and Installation. These processes depend on systems for configura-
tion and inventory management. The complexities associated with the handling of
inventories in a large network that encompasses a variety of equipment are usually
underestimated.
4. Network Management and Trouble Management. These are processes that rely on
systems that are only accessible for the network operators for fault management
12 PROJECTS IN TELECOMMUNICATION SERVICES](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1068595-250601143224-5ff8f869/85/Managing-Projects-In-Telecommunication-Services-1st-Edition-Mostafa-Hashem-Sherif-36-320.jpg)
![the participants are different from those of the media organizations. In mission-critical
applications the reliability of the network and its availability cannot be compromised.
However, there are many other tolerant applications where “best effort” is good enough.
A Relatively Long Planning Stage
Planning for telecommunication services usually takes a long time. Even temporary pro-
jects (e.g., disaster recovery contingencies) require a lot of planning and preparation (5
years in the case of the Olympics, for example). The planning includes aspects related
to the network and the equipment, the organizational arrangement, the regulation, train-
ing of the personnel, whether permanent or temporary, and so on. The logistics of
equipment removal is important, not only for temporary installations where typically
more than 90% of the installed equipment has to be removed, but also in more perma-
nent installations due to more stringent environmental laws that require recycling or the
treatment of pollutants.
The industry of telecommunication services does not experience short turnaround
times such as those encountered in consumer electronics, desktop software, or even net-
work equipment: While the industry is dynamic, service innovations happen at a much
slower rate [Ward, 1998, p. 38]. Evolution must be steady according to a thoroughly
thought-out plan, even though the regulatory changes, globalization, and new technolo-
gies are bringing open significant opportunities. This fundamental point was missed dur-
ing the dot com bubble.
Finally, the long gestation of telecommunication services makes them true reflections
of the society itself in terms of fundamental assumptions and power structure: whether
services are decided or financed after consultation with the public, by top-down fiat or
through the market mechanism of supply and demand.
Summary of Distinctions Between the Development of Telecommunication
Services and Equipment. The production and delivery of telecommunication service
usually comprises many subprojects that evolve at different speeds, using a wide variety
of technologies and requiring many distinctive skills. These challenges make telecommu-
nication projects very rewarding because of the many possibilities of cross-education and
the lack of monotony. Table 1.2 summarizes the distinctions between development pro-
jects in telecommunication services and those in product design and manufacturing or
software development projects. These distinctions are important to ponder and keep in
mind because they guide the way resources and skills are aligned during the lifetimes of
projects. It is recommended that these differences be considered in the conception, design
and implementation of telecommunication services.
SUMMARY
Telecommunication service projects are complex endeavors that exhibit two facets, de-
pending on the vantage point. With deregulation, the number of interfaces and linkages
as well as the pressure to achieve faster rate of returns have increased the complexity of
service development. We drew on some examples to illustrate how the constraints on
schedule, cost, and quality vary with the nature of the service. In particular, the main
SUMMARY 17](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1068595-250601143224-5ff8f869/85/Managing-Projects-In-Telecommunication-Services-1st-Edition-Mostafa-Hashem-Sherif-41-320.jpg)
![Telecommunication projects build on a technical infrastructure to satisfy business and so-
cial objectives. In this chapter, we take advantage of studies on the management of inno-
vation to gain insight into the nature of telecommunication projects. In particular, we ex-
plain the role that internal and external standards play in the development of
telecommunication services. The methodology presented here will combine two perspec-
tives, the technological and the marketing and social, to draw a more comprehensive view
of the context in which projects are executed.
THE TWO DIMENSIONS OF TELECOMMUNICATION PROJECTS
The Technological Dimension
There are five main stages of a technology life cycle: innovation, improvement, maturity,
substitution, and obsolescence [Betz, 1993; Khalil, 2000]. These stages are shown in Fig-
ure 2.1, with the ordinate measuring the market presence (e.g., revenues, market share,
etc.).
An emerging technology stimulates the consolidation of new functional areas and the
accumulation of new types of knowledge through research and field experience. As the
properties of this emerging technology become better understood, new designs ameliorate
its performance and increase the efficiency of the production processes. If the technology
moves to the main stream, its market share expands until its performance saturates. At
this point, any substantial performance improvement will require a switch to a new tech-
Managing Projects in Telecommunication Services. By Mostafa Hashem Sherif 19
Copyright © 2006 The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.
2
STANDARDS AND INNOVATION
IN TELECOMMUNICATION
SERVICES](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1068595-250601143224-5ff8f869/85/Managing-Projects-In-Telecommunication-Services-1st-Edition-Mostafa-Hashem-Sherif-43-320.jpg)
![nology as shown in Figure 2.2. It is sometimes possible to predict these limits using scien-
tific knowledge, such as in the case of Moore’s law in integrated circuit design or the
channel capacity in information transmission. Some examples of past and current technol-
ogy transitions in telecommunications transitions include:
앫 Move from manual switching, to automatic switching, which allowed direct dialing
of telephone numbers
앫 Move from analog to digital in transmission and switching equipment, which al-
lowed improvements in the voice quality suppressing noisy backgrounds
앫 Move from circuit-switched networks to packet-switched networks
앫 Move from coaxial cables to fiber-optic cables, etc.
We give now two examples showing the technology S-curve (but do not illustrate the
technology transition shown in Figure 2.2). The first example is that of dynamic routing
in circuit-switched networks, which was introduced in telephone networks to improve the
efficiency of network usage and enhance robustness to failures [Ash and Chemouil,
2004]. The genesis of the work started in 1975 to 1980 by adapting the techniques of
learning automata to routing problems for telephone. Figure 2.3 shows the diffusion of
this technique from 1984 until 2000 in various telephone networks. The second example,
illustrated in Figure 2.4, is the subscriber growth of i-mode services in Japan from Febru-
ary 1999 until November 2004.
The sequence of events in which technological change affect telecommunication ser-
vices follow the following sequence:
1. A new technology is embodied in the design of network elements and/or network
element management systems.
20 STANDARDS AND INNOVATION IN TELECOMMUNICATION SERVICES
Figure 2.1 Technology life cycle.
Market
Volume
for
the
technology
Emergence Improvement Maturity Substitution Obsolescence](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1068595-250601143224-5ff8f869/85/Managing-Projects-In-Telecommunication-Services-1st-Edition-Mostafa-Hashem-Sherif-44-320.jpg)
![In all these steps, successful management of the technological innovation depends on the
mobilization of a network of people with technical and managerial skills. Members of this
network include research and development specialists, production engineers, managers
capable of facing uncertainties (entrepreneurs), and financiers. Because most of the
know-how resides in the heads of key people, the transfer of knowledge depends on the
movement of these key people and a systematic program for training at all levels. Howev-
er, in the early phases, the networks are susceptible to single points of failures if a key
participant with essential expertise leaves the project.
The Marketing and Social Dimension
C. M. Christensen introduced the concept of a value network as the set of attributes used to
rank products, services, or technologies and determine their cost structures [Christensen,
1997, p. 32, 39–41]. This value network defines the context within which a company eval-
uates the environment that surrounds it, responds to opportunities and threats, and strives
for profit. Significant changes in the attributes or their rankings that alter the industrial
structure perturb that understanding by introducing discontinuities in the value chain.
Factors that can cause a discontinuity include new legislation, emerging standards, evolu-
tion of the customer’s profiles, and so on; such a discontinuity opens opportunities to new
entrants. For example, how to evaluate the subjective quality of speech communication de-
pends on whether mobility is important to the user; in cases where it is important, then some
degradation can be accepted [Johannesson, 1997]. Innovations that change the rank order
are called disruptive while those that preserve it are called sustaining [Christensen, 1997, p.
39].
The marketing impact of a change in the value network can effect one or several of the
following aspects [Abernathy and Clark, 1985]:
1. Customer groups and markets
2. Customer applications
3. Channels of distribution and service delivery
22 STANDARDS AND INNOVATION IN TELECOMMUNICATION SERVICES
0
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30
35
40
45
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500
Days from service start (2/22/99)
Number
of
subscribers
in
millions
Figure 2.4 Subscriber growth for i-mode in Japan (Source: http://www.nttdocomo.com/company-
info/subscriber.html).](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1068595-250601143224-5ff8f869/85/Managing-Projects-In-Telecommunication-Services-1st-Edition-Mostafa-Hashem-Sherif-46-320.jpg)
![4. Customer knowledge
5. Modes of communication with customers
Classification of Innovations
Depending on the degree of changes they introduce in the technology or in the existing
value network, innovations can be grouped into four categories as shown in Figure 2.5:
incremental, architectural, platform, and radical [Abernathy and Clark, 1985, Betz, 1993,
p. 394; Sherif, 2003a, 2003b].
Incremental (or process or modular) innovations build upon well-known technologi-
cal capabilities to enhance an existing technology through improved performance, en-
hanced security, better quality, and reduced cost, within the established value network.
The purpose of the innovation is to enhance the competitive position through economies
of scale to lower cost and improve productivity through automation. The objective of re-
duction in production and distribution costs requires extensive data collected from real
experience. It is estimated that half of the economic benefit of a new technology comes
from process improvements after the technology has been commercially established
[Christensen, 1997, p. 56, note 3]. This is why incremental innovations are typically
process innovations that tend to reinforce the existing industrial order because they are
more readily integrated within the firm’s strategy from both the technological and finan-
cial viewpoints. This contrasts with other types of innovations that could alter the order
and offer opportunities to new entrants [Betz, 1993, p. 369]. For example, the high-level
data link protocol (HDLC) is an incremental innovation through the standardization of the
synchronous data link control (SDLC) protocol that IBM had developed for its System
Network Architecture (SNA).
THE TWO DIMENSIONS OF TELECOMMUNICATION PROJECTS 23
Figure 2.5 Classification of innovation in terms of the value chain and the technological competen-
cies.
Platform Innovation
Incremental Innovation
Architectural
Innovation
Radical Innovation
New
Technology
Existing
Technology
New
Value Chain
Existing
Value Chain
Value Chain Discontinuity
Technological
Discontinuity
Sustaining
Innovation
Disruptive
Innovation](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1068595-250601143224-5ff8f869/85/Managing-Projects-In-Telecommunication-Services-1st-Edition-Mostafa-Hashem-Sherif-47-320.jpg)
![Architectural innovations (sometimes called systems innovations) provide new func-
tional capabilities by redefining the rearrangements of existing technology to satisfy un-
met needs (simplicity, cost, reliability, efficiency, convenience, etc.) [Betz, 1993, p. 21].
Architectural innovations result from a market pull: new uses of an existing technology.
This is an articulation of latent patterns of demands that can be satisfied by blending in-
cremental technical improvements from several previously separate fields of technology
to create a new product or service. This category of innovation tends to modify the supply
chain and to reorganize the market segments, ultimately forming a new value network
[Christensen, 1997, pp. 171–176]. An example of architectural innovation is the automo-
bile that put together carriage technology, with bicycle technology and the new gasoline
engine.
The interplay between architectural and incremental innovations can be seen using the
following example. The Standardized General Markup Language (SGML) was an incre-
mental innovation from ISO starting with GML (Generalized Markup Language), a lan-
guage that IBM had developed to manage electronic documents. The HyperText Markup
Language (HTML) and the Extensible Markup Language (XML) descend from SGML.
HTML is an architectural innovation based on SGML because its field of application is
document retrieval over the Internet, which is in a different value chain than the original
application of data base management. Finally, XML is an incremental innovation of
HTML. This is summarized in Figure 2.6 [Egyedi and Loeffen, 2001].
Figure 2.7 illustrates the succession of innovation types from GML to XML using the
2 × 2 matrix of innovations.
Platform innovations correspond to a quantum leap in performance without changes to
an existing value chain [Betz, 1993, pp. 309–322; Christensen, 1997, pp. 62–63]. This
technology transition demands the integration of sophisticated resources and the exploita-
tion of expertise gained usually beyond the reach of small- or medium-sized companies
[Christensen, 1997, p. 74, no. 3]. New platforms change the technical competitive posi-
tions and weaken small firms by changing the technical characteristics on which competi-
tion is pursued. Because a technology push is the main characteristic of platform innova-
tions, technological considerations dictate business strategies to manage the diffusion
growth including licensing, training, and so on.
Radical innovations provide a totally new set of functional capabilities that are dis-
continuous with the existing technological capabilities or value networks. Kuhn [1970]
showed that the advancement in science is characterized by long periods of regular de-
velopments punctuated by periods of revolutions. Likewise, radical innovations are
spaced in time and, when successful, lead to a dominant design that is improved con-
tinuously.
24 STANDARDS AND INNOVATION IN TELECOMMUNICATION SERVICES
GML
(IBM/1969)
SGML (ISO/1979-1986)
HTML
(IETF/ 1995)
XML
(W3C/1996-1998)
Compatible succession
Incompatible succession
SGML+
(ISO)
Figure 2.6 Evolution of GML to SGML, HTML, and XML.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1068595-250601143224-5ff8f869/85/Managing-Projects-In-Telecommunication-Services-1st-Edition-Mostafa-Hashem-Sherif-48-320.jpg)
![Radical innovations face four types of uncertainties: technical uncertainty, resource
uncertainty, organizational uncertainty and market uncertainty. Technical uncertainty
arises from two factors: (1) Many of the technical characteristics of the innovation are not
well understood, and (2) an even better technology may become available and displace
the technology under development. In telecommunications, this is how optical transmis-
sion displaced the emerging waveguide technology.* Resource uncertainties relate to the
unknowns regarding the cost of development and implementation as well as of maintain-
ing the collaborative network of technical, managerial, and marketing experts. Organiza-
tional uncertainties are due to the tension from simultaneous discontinuities in the tech-
nology and in the value network. Market acceptance is another unknown, because the
more radical the technical innovation, the less likely that existing customers will be able
to guide its development: Market research methodologies typically focus on existing ap-
plications [Betz, 1993, p. 165; Christensen, 1997]. For this type of invention, the advice
by W. E. Deming is very appropriate: “New products and new types of service are gener-
ated, not by asking customers, but by knowledge, imagination, innovation, risk, trial and
error on the part of the producer, backed by enough capital to develop the product or ser-
vice and to stay in business during the lean months of introduction” [Deming, 1986, p.
182].
Innovations and the Technology Life Cycle
Consider Figure 2.8, which relates the various innovation types to the technology life cy-
cle and market acceptance. Radical innovations are encountered first in proof of concept
implementations. Once the innovation proves itself, successive platform and incremental
innovations enhance the performance and allow the firm to gain market share. Architec-
tural innovation are common when the technology has matured in pursuit of new markets.
New product or service concepts based on disruptive innovations, whether radical or ar-
chitectural, are difficult to envision. They require flexibility to unlearn habits and prac-
tices, carry some experimentation, and exhibit keen awareness of the environment in
terms of competitors, suppliers, regulations, fashions and fads, and so on.
THE TWO DIMENSIONS OF TELECOMMUNICATION PROJECTS 25
Platform
Innovation
Radical
Innovation
Incremental
Innovation
Architectural
Innovation
SGML
GML
XML
HTML
Figure 2.7 Relation of incremental and architectural innovations in the case of GML, SGML, HTML,
and XML.
*I am grateful to my colleague Thomas Hellstern for suggesting this example.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1068595-250601143224-5ff8f869/85/Managing-Projects-In-Telecommunication-Services-1st-Edition-Mostafa-Hashem-Sherif-49-320.jpg)
![telecommunication services [Sherif, 2003a]. The changes in OSS for incremental innova-
tions are not shown because they are on a much smaller scale than for all other types of
innovations.
Incremental Innovation
Incremental innovations revolve around the dominant design to improve operational per-
formance, reduce cost, and increase efficiency. Because the technical and operational
properties of the service are well understood, these innovations depend on the empirical
experience gained from extensive use of mature technologies and within the prevailing
order. From a service viewpoint, the telephone answering machine is one such an innova-
tion [Vercoulen and Van Wegberg, 1999]; without affecting the structure of the public
telephone network, it increased the operators’ revenues because callers left their messages
to the absent party rather than hanging up, thereby giving the operators the opportunity of
recuperating the cost of the call attempts. For mobile operators, games are incremental in-
novative services that use the same infrastructure to increase connect time. Within the
core network, incremental innovations are improvements to achieve higher volumes and
attain economies of scale. This can be realized, for example, with (a) increases in trans-
mission or switching capacities by going to higher speeds or by using larger switches or
(b) increases in process capacity to raise productivity through automation, relocation to
areas of low labor cost, or outsourcing of jobs.
As mentioned earlier, the main organizational characteristic of incremental innova-
tions is that they take place in a stable environment, where it is relatively easy to identify
improvements with methodical planning. Most stakeholders have fewer incentives to dis-
rupt the value chain, so these innovations tend to support the established order or domi-
nant design configuration. Kuhn’s description of the way “normal science” operates gives
us some insight on the limits put on incremental innovations: They should be consistent
THE TWO DIMENSIONS OF TELECOMMUNICATION PROJECTS 27
Platform Innovation
Incremental Innovation
Architectural
Innovation
Radical Innovation
New
Technology
Existing
Technology
New
Value Chain
Existing
Value Chain
Value Chain Discontinuity
Technological
Discontinuity
Sustaining
Innovation
Disruptive
Innovation
Matured networking technologies +
improved M&Ps + new applications
Sustaining networking technologies +
improved OSSs + new applications
Figure 2.9 Innovations types in telecommunications services.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1068595-250601143224-5ff8f869/85/Managing-Projects-In-Telecommunication-Services-1st-Edition-Mostafa-Hashem-Sherif-51-320.jpg)
![with the established design [Kuhn, 1970, p. 39]; that is, they should not rock the boat. By
optimizing the operation, however, they increase the rigidity of processes and products,
which decreases the overall ability to cope with changing markets or technical require-
ments. Also, such productive and efficient operation is less robust to changes in regula-
tions or customer tastes, breakdown in automatic processes, or disruptions in the out-
sourced functions.
Architectural Innovation
Many telecommunications services are architecture innovations. The reverse charging
(800) service changed the way telephone calls are paid for—that is, by the called party in-
stead of the calling party. Bluetooth (and the IEEE 802.x standards) is a marriage of local
area networks (LAN) and wireless communications [Keil, 2002]. Bluetooth is a wireless
technology that operates in the unlicensed part of the radio spectrum reserved for industri-
al scientific medicine (ISM) band at 2.45 GHz to connect mobile handsets with computer
terminals. It relies on expertise in radio chip integration in addition to radio transmission,
antenna design, and protocol engineering to communicate with portable computers and
personal digital assistants.
The international call-back service was an architectural innovation to allow cheaper
overseas phone calls. Similarly, the Simbox innovation exploits the price differential be-
tween calls made from fixed phones to mobile phones and those among mobile terminals.
A box of SIM (Subscriber identification module) cards is placed on the premises of an en-
terprise so that calls from fixed phones to mobile phones are intercepted and rerouted
over the mobile network using one of the available SIM cards.
Another example of architectural innovation is the i-mode service whose “father,” Kei-
ichi Enoki, admitted that it was made by combining existing technologies [Nakamoto,
2001]. This service concept provides wireless access through mobile telephone handsets
to information servers with the public network operator acting as an intermediary to guar-
antee both the merchant and the buyer and to collect payments on the merchant’s behalf.
In other words, this is a new embodiment of videotext services that the minitel had of-
fered in the 1980s with wireline access. As shown in Figure 2.10, the videotext technolo-
28 STANDARDS AND INNOVATION IN TELECOMMUNICATION SERVICES
Platform Innovation
Incremental Innovation
Architectural
Innovation
Radical Innovation
Packet switching
Wireless telephony
Consumer electronics
Web applications
i-mode (and
videotext)
Figure 2.10 Videotext (I-mode/minitel) as architectural innovations for telecommunications services.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1068595-250601143224-5ff8f869/85/Managing-Projects-In-Telecommunication-Services-1st-Edition-Mostafa-Hashem-Sherif-52-320.jpg)
![to direct technical contributions in the right direction: whether to push the performance
limits or to think outside the boundaries of the existing framework.
Platform Innovation
Platform innovations improve the performance of the telecommunication service without
disturbing the industry structure. These are complex programs that require large capital
investments to upgrade the existing infrastructure. Because of this, they weaken the rela-
tive positions of small firms due to the scarcity of financing as well as technical and man-
agerial talent. The introduction of digital transmission in the 1970s was a platform inno-
vation. According to the classification scheme in Figure 2.9, frame relay and the
asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) are platform innovations of packet switching along
the “connection-oriented” paradigm. Gigabit Ethernet can be viewed as either a platform
innovation (from a local area network viewpoint) or an architectural innovation (from a
wide area network viewpoint).
Radical Innovation
According to Kuhn [1970, p. 92], “a scientific revolution is a noncummulative develop-
mental episode in which an older paradigm is replaced in whole or in part by an incompat-
ible new one.” If we consider that paradigms of telecommunication services are defined by
both the technology and the market context through value chains, we can appreciate that
radical innovations are infrequent because they change the way telecommunications prob-
lems are understood and resolved. The introduction of modems in the late 1950s was a rad-
ical innovation because it allowed the transmission of digital data among computers over
the analog telephone networks. Another radical innovation is packet switching, which
branched into two approaches. The “connection-oriented” approach continued along the
lines used in telephony so as to maintain the overall call quality. The “connection-less” ap-
proach of the IP protocol, however, requires a major overhaul of the OSSs, new rules for
traffic management, and retraining of human resources. This is why government interven-
tion is often an important facilitator for radical innovations in telecommunications.
Once a radical innovation becomes the dominant design, continuous improvements in
the form of platform and incremental innovations move the technology on its S-curve tra-
jectory. However, architectural innovations can combine it with another value network,
making it a potentially disruptive technology for another industry [Christensen, 1997, p.
41].
Interaction of Innovations in Equipment and Services
End-to-end service offers in telecommunications rely on the smooth integration of many
components. This is why the classification scheme illustrated in Figure 2.9 considers
process and business aspects in addition to technology. One implication is that, because
the evolution of systems, organizations, and technologies are rarely synchronized, inno-
vations in terminals, network equipment, and services are not necessarily of the same
type, even when they appear as a single bundle to the end-user.
Earlier (section entitled “Incremental Innovation”) we used the telephone answering
machine as an example of incremental service innovation. From a terminal viewpoint,
however, this innovation is architectural, because the terminal is a combined telephone re-
ceiver and a tape recorder.
30 STANDARDS AND INNOVATION IN TELECOMMUNICATION SERVICES](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1068595-250601143224-5ff8f869/85/Managing-Projects-In-Telecommunication-Services-1st-Edition-Mostafa-Hashem-Sherif-54-320.jpg)
![dense oak-trees make a mid-day gloom, you walk amid the
unknown, undistinguishable dead. Which was father and which
mother, where are lover and stricken sweetheart, whether this is the
dust of laughing babe or crooning grandam, you will never know: no
foot-stones, no head-stones; sometimes a few rough rails laid
around, as you would make a little pen for swine. In places,
however, one sees a picket-fence put up, or a sort of shed built over.
A MOUNTAINEER DAME.
Traditions and folk-lore among them are evanescent, and vary widely
in different localities. It appears that in part they are sprung from
the early hunters who came into the mountains when game was
abundant, sport unfailing, living cheap. Among them now are still-
hunters, who know the haunts of bear and deer, needing no dogs.
They even now prefer wild meat—even "'possum" and "'coon" and
ground-hog—to any other. In Bell County I spent the day in the
house of a woman eighty years old, who was a lingering
representative of a nearly extinct type. She had never been out of
the neighborhood of her birth, knew the mountains like a garden,
had whipped men in single-handed encounter, brought down many a
[262]](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1068595-250601143224-5ff8f869/85/Managing-Projects-In-Telecommunication-Services-1st-Edition-Mostafa-Hashem-Sherif-56-320.jpg)
![deer and wild turkey with her own rifle, and now, infirm, had but to
sit in her cabin door and send her trained dogs into the depths of
the forests to discover the wished-for game. A fiercer woman I never
looked on.
III
Our course now lay direct towards Cumberland Gap, some twenty
miles southward. Our road ran along the bank of the Cumberland
River to the ford, the immemorial crossing-place of early travel—and
a beautiful spot—thence to Pineville, situated in that narrow opening
in Pine Mountain where the river cuts it, and thence through the
valley of Yellow Creek to the wonderful pass. The scenery in this
region is one succession of densely wooded mountains, blue-tinted
air, small cultivated tracts in the fertile valleys, and lovely
watercourses.
Along the first part of our route the river slips crystal-clear over its
rocky bed, and beneath the lone green pendent branches of the
trees that crowd the banks. At the famous ford it was only two or
three feet deep at the time of our crossing. This is a historic point.
Here was one of the oldest settlements in the country; here the
Federal army destroyed the houses and fences during the Civil War;
and here Zollikoffer came to protect the Kentucky gate that opens
into East Tennessee. At Pineville, just beyond, we did not remain
long. For some reasons not clearly understood by travellers, a dead-
line had been drawn through the midst of the town, and not
knowing on which side we were entitled to stand, we hastened on to
a place where we might occupy neutral ground.
The situation is strikingly picturesque: the mountain looks as if cleft
sheer and fallen apart, the peaks on each side rising almost
perpendicularly, with massive overhanging crests wooded to the
summits, but showing gray rifts of the inexhaustible limestone. The
river when lowest is here at an elevation of nine hundred and sixty
[263]
[264]](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1068595-250601143224-5ff8f869/85/Managing-Projects-In-Telecommunication-Services-1st-Edition-Mostafa-Hashem-Sherif-57-320.jpg)
![feet, and the peaks leap to the height of twenty-two hundred. Here
in the future will most probably pass a railroad, and be a populous
town, for here is the only opening through Pine Mountain from "the
brakes" of Sandy to the Tennessee line, and tributary to the
watercourses that centre here are some five hundred thousand acres
of timber land.
The ride from Pineville to the Gap, fourteen miles southward, is most
beautiful. Yellow Creek becomes in local pronunciation "Yaller Crick."
One cannot be long in eastern Kentucky without being struck by the
number and character of the names given to the watercourses,
which were the natural avenues of migratory travel. Few of the
mountains have names. What a history is shut up in these names!
Cutshin Creek, where some pioneer, they say, damaged those useful
members; but more probably where grows a low greenbrier which
cuts the shins and riddles the pantaloons. These pioneers had
humor. They named one creek "Troublesome," for reasons apparent
to him who goes there; another, "No Worse Creek," on equally good
grounds; another, "Defeated Creek;" and a great many, "Lost Creek."
In one part of the country it is possible for one to enter "Hell fur
Sartain," and get out at "Kingdom Come." Near by are "Upper Devil"
and "Lower Devil." One day we went to a mountain meeting which
was held in "a school-house and church-house" on "Stinking Creek."
One might suppose they would have worshipped in a more fragrant
locality; but the stream is very beautiful, and not malodorous. It
received its name from its former canebrakes and deer licks, which
made game abundant. Great numbers were killed for choice bits of
venison and hides. Then there are "Ten-mile Creek" and "Sixteen-
mile Creek," meaning to clinch the distance by name; and what is
philologically interesting, one finds numerous "Trace Forks,"
originally "Trail Forks."
[265]
[266]](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1068595-250601143224-5ff8f869/85/Managing-Projects-In-Telecommunication-Services-1st-Edition-Mostafa-Hashem-Sherif-58-320.jpg)
![OLD CORN-MILL AT
PINEVILLE.
Bell County and the Yellow Creek Valley serve to illustrate the
incalculable mineral and timber resources of eastern Kentucky. Our
road at times cut through forests of magnificent timbers—oak (black
and white), walnut (black and white), poplar, maple, and chestnut,
beech, lynn, gum, dogwood, and elm. Here are some of the finest
coal-fields in the world, the one on Clear Creek being fourteen feet
thick. Here are pure cannel-coals and coking-coals. At no other point
in the Mississippi Valley are iron ores suitable for steel-making
purposes so close to fuel so cheap. With an eastern coal-field of
10,000 square miles, with an area equally large covered with a virgin
growth of the finest economic timbers, with watercourses feasible
and convenient, it cannot be long before eastern Kentucky will be
opened up to great industries. Enterprise has already turned hither,
and the distinctiveness of the mountaineer race already begins to
disappear. The two futures before them are, to be swept out of
these mountains by the in-rushing spirit of contending industries, or
to be aroused, civilized, and developed.
[267]](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1068595-250601143224-5ff8f869/85/Managing-Projects-In-Telecommunication-Services-1st-Edition-Mostafa-Hashem-Sherif-59-320.jpg)
![Long before you come in sight of the great Gap, the idea of it
dominates the mind. While yet some miles away it looms up, 1675
feet in elevation, some half a mile across from crest to crest, the
pinnacle on the left towering to the height of 2500 feet.
It was late in the afternoon when our tired horses began the long,
winding, rocky climb from the valley to the brow of the pass. As we
stood in the passway, amid the deepening shadows of the twilight
and the solemn repose of the mighty landscape, the Gap seemed to
be crowded with two invisible and countless pageants of human life,
the one passing in, the other passing out; and the air grew thick
with unheard utterances—primeval sounds, undistinguishable and
strange, of creatures nameless and never seen by man; the wild
rush and whoop of retreating and pursuing tribes; the slow steps of
watchful pioneers; the wail of dying children and the songs of
homeless women; the muffled tread of routed and broken armies—
all the sounds of surprise and delight, victory and defeat, hunger
and pain, and weariness and despair, that the human heart can
utter. Here passed the first of the white race who led the way into
the valley of the Cumberland; here passed that small band of
fearless men who gave the Gap its name; here passed the "Long
Hunters;" here rushed the armies of the Civil War; here has passed
the wave of westerly emigration, whose force has spent itself only
on the Pacific slopes; and here in the long future must flow
backward and forward the wealth of the North and the South.
[268]
[269]
[270]
[271]](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1068595-250601143224-5ff8f869/85/Managing-Projects-In-Telecommunication-Services-1st-Edition-Mostafa-Hashem-Sherif-60-320.jpg)
![MOUNTAIN PASSES OF THE
CUMBERLAND
I
he writer has been publishing during the last few years a
series of articles on Kentucky. With this article the series
will be brought to a close. Hitherto he has written of
nature in the Blue-grass Region and of certain aspects of
life; but as he comes to take leave of his theme, he finds his
attention fixed upon that great mountain wall which lies along the
southeastern edge of the State. At various points of this wall are
now beginning to be enacted new scenes in the history of Kentucky;
and what during a hundred years has been an inaccessible
background, is becoming the fore-front of a civilization which will not
only change the life of the State within, but advance it to a
commanding position in national economic affairs.
But it should not be lost sight of that in writing this article, as in
writing all the others, it is with the human problem in Kentucky that
he is solely concerned. He will seem to be dealing with commercial
activities for their own sake. He will write of coals and ores and
timbers, of ovens and tunnels and mines; but if the reader will bear
with him to the end, he will learn that these are dealt with only for
the sake of looking beyond them at the results which they bring on:
town-making in various stages, the massing and distributing of
wealth, the movements of population, the dislodgment of isolated
[272]](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1068595-250601143224-5ff8f869/85/Managing-Projects-In-Telecommunication-Services-1st-Edition-Mostafa-Hashem-Sherif-61-320.jpg)
![customs—on the whole, results that lie in the domain of the human
problem in its deepest phases.
Consider for a moment, then, what this great wall is, and what
influence it has had over the history of Kentucky and upon the
institutions and characteristics of its people.
You may begin at the western frontier of Kentucky on the Mississippi
River, about five hundred miles away, and travel steadily eastward
across the billowy plateau of the State, going up and up all the time
until you come to its base, and above its base it rises to the height
of some three thousand feet. For miles before you reach it you
discover that it is defended by a zone of almost inaccessible hills
with steep slopes, forests difficult to penetrate, and narrow jagged
gorges; and further defended by a single sharp wall-like ridge,
having an elevation of about twenty-two hundred feet, and lying
nearly parallel with it, at a distance of about twenty miles. Or, if you
should attempt to reach this wall from the south, you would discover
that from that side also it is hardly less hostile to approach. Hence it
has stood in its virgin wilderness, a vast isolating and isolated
barrier, fierce, beautiful, storm-racked, serene; in winter, brown and
gray, with its naked woods and rifts of stone, or mantled in white; in
summer, green, or of all greens from darkest to palest, and touched
with all shades of bloom; in autumn, colored like the sunset clouds;
curtained all the year by exquisite health-giving atmospheres, lifting
itself all the year towards lovely, changing skies.
Understand the position of this natural fortress-line with regard to
the area of Kentucky. That area has somewhat the shape of an
enormous flat foot, with a disjointed big toe, a roughly hacked-off
ankle, and a missing heel. The sole of this huge foot rests solidly on
Tennessee, the Ohio River trickles across the ankle and over the top,
the big toe is washed entirely off by the Tennessee River, and the
long-missing heel is to be found in Virginia, never having been ceded
by that State. Between the Kentucky foot and the Virginia heel is
piled up this immense, bony, grisly mass of the Cumberland
[273]](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1068595-250601143224-5ff8f869/85/Managing-Projects-In-Telecommunication-Services-1st-Edition-Mostafa-Hashem-Sherif-62-320.jpg)
![Mountain, extending some three hundred miles north-east and
south-west.
It was through this heel that Kentucky had to be peopled. The thin,
half-starved, weary line of pioneer civilizers had to penetrate it, and
climb this obstructing mountain wall, as a line of travelling ants
might climb the wall of a castle. In this case only the strongest of
the ants—the strongest in body, the strongest in will—succeeded in
getting over and establishing their colony in the country far beyond.
Luckily there was an enormous depression in the wall, or they might
never have scaled it. During about half a century this depression was
the difficult, exhausting entrance-point through which the State
received the largest part of its people, the furniture of their homes,
and the implements of their civilization; so that from the very outset
that people represented the most striking instance of a survival of
the fittest that may be observed in the founding of any American
commonwealth. The feeblest of the ants could not climb the wall;
the idlest of them would not. Observe, too, that, once on the other
side, it was as hard to get back as it had been to get over. That is,
the Cumberland Mountain kept the little ultramontane society
isolated. Being isolated, it was kept pure-blooded. Being isolated, it
developed the spirit and virtues engendered by isolation. Hence
those traits for which Kentuckians were once, and still think
themselves, distinguished—passion for self-government, passion for
personal independence, bravery, fortitude, hospitality. On account of
this mountain barrier the entire civilization of the State has had a
one-sided development. It has become known for pasturage and
agriculture, whiskey, hemp, tobacco, and fine stock. On account of it
the great streams of colonization flowing from the North towards the
South, and flowing from the Atlantic seaboard towards the West,
have divided and passed around Kentucky as waters divide and pass
around an island, uniting again on the farther side. It has done the
like for the highways of commerce, so that the North has become
woven to the South and the East woven to the West by a connecting
tissue of railroads, dropping Kentucky out as though it had no vital
connection, as though it were not a controlling point of connection,
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![for the four sections of the country. Thus keeping out railroads, it
has kept out manufactures, kept out commerce, kept out industrial
cities. For three-quarters of a century generations of young
Kentuckians have had to seek pursuits of this character in other
quarters, thus establishing a constant draining away from the State
of its resolute, vigorous manhood. Restricting the Kentuckians who
have remained to an agricultural type of life, it has brought upon
them a reputation for lack of enterprise. More than all this has that
great barrier wall done for the history of Kentucky. For, within a
hundred years, the only thing to take possession of it, slowly,
sluggishly overspreading the region of its foot-hills, its vales and
fertile slopes—the only thing to take possession of it and to claim it
has been a race of mountaineers, an idle, shiftless, ignorant, lawless
population, whose increasing numbers, pauperism, and lawlessness,
whose family feuds and clan-like vendettas, have for years been
steadily gaining for Kentucky the reputation for having one of the
worst backwoods populations on the continent, or, for that matter, in
the world.
But for the presence of this wall the history of the State, indeed the
history of the United States, would have been profoundly different.
Long ago, in virtue of its position, Kentucky would have knit
together, instead of holding apart, the North and the South. The
campaigns and the results of the Civil War would have been
changed; the Civil War might never have taken place. But standing
as it has stood, it has left Kentucky, near the close of the first
century of its existence as a State, with a reputation somewhat like
the shape of its territory—unsymmetric, mutilated, and with certain
parts missing.
But now consider this wall of the Cumberland Mountain from another
point of view. If you should stand on the crest at any point where it
forms the boundary of Kentucky; or south of it, where it extends into
Tennessee; or north of it, where it extends into Virginia—if you
should stand thus and look northward, you would look out upon a
vast area of coal. For many years now it has been known that the
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![coal-measure rocks of eastern Kentucky comprise about a fourth of
the area of the State, and are not exceeded in value by those of any
other State. It has been known that this buried solar force exceeds
that of Great Britain. Later it has become known that the Kentucky
portion of the great Appalachian coal-field contains the largest area
of rich cannel-coals yet discovered, these having been traced in
sixteen counties, and some of them excelling by test the famous
cannel-coal of Great Britain; later it has become known that here is
to be found the largest area of coking-coal yet discovered, the main
coal—discovered a few years ago, and named the "Elkhorn"—having
been traced over sixteen hundred square miles, and equalling
American standard coke in excellence.
MAP SHOWING
MOUNTAIN PASSES OF
THE CUMBERLAND.
Further, looking northward, you look out upon a region of iron ores,
the deposits in Kentucky ranking sixth in variety and extent among
those to be found in all other States, and being better disposed for
working than any except those of Virginia, Tennessee, and Alabama.
For a hundred years now, it should be remembered in this
connection, iron has been smelted in Kentucky, been and been an
important article of commerce. As early as 1823 it was made at
Cumberland Gap, and shipped by river to markets as remote as New
Orleans and St. Louis. At an early date, also, it was made in a small
charcoal forge at Big Creek Gap, and was hauled in wagons into
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![central Kentucky, where it found a ready market for such purposes
as plough-shares and wagon tires.
Further, looking northward, you have extending far and wide before
you the finest primeval region of hard-woods in America.
Suppose, now, that you turn and look from this same crest of the
Cumberland Mountain southward, or towards the Atlantic seaboard.
In that direction there lie some two hundred and fifty thousand
square miles of country which is practically coalless; but practically
coalless, it is incalculably rich in iron ores for the manufacture of iron
and steel. You look out upon the new industrial empire of the United
States, with vast and ever-growing needs of manufactures, fuel, and
railroads. That is, for a hundred miles you stand on the dividing line
of two distinct geological formations: to the north, the Appalachian
coal-fields; to the south, mountains of iron ores; rearing itself
between these, this immense barrier wall, which creates an
unapproachable wilderness not only in southeastern Kentucky, but in
East Tennessee, western Virginia, and western North Carolina—the
largest extent of country in the United States remaining
undeveloped.
But the time had to come when this wilderness would be
approached on all sides, attacked, penetrated to the heart. Such
wealth of resources could not be let alone or remain unused. As
respects the development of the region, the industrial problem may
be said to have taken two forms—the one, the development of the
coal and iron on opposite sides of the mountains, the manufacture
of coke and iron and steel, the establishment of wood-working
industries, and the delivery of all products to the markets of the
land; second, the bringing together of the coals on the north side
and the ores throughout the south. In this way, then, the
Cumberland Mountain no longer offered a barrier merely to the
civilization of Kentucky, but to the solution of the greatest economic
problem of the age—the cheapest manufacture of iron and steel. But
before the pressure of this need the mountain had to give way and
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![surrender its treasures. At any cost of money and labor, the time had
to come when it would pay to bring these coals and ores together.
But how was this to be done? The answer was simple: it must be
done by means of natural water gaps and by tunnels through the
mountain. It is the object of this paper to call attention to the way in
which the new civilization of the South is expected to work at four
mountain passes, and to point out some of the results which are to
follow.
II
On the Kentucky side of the mighty wall of the Cumberland
Mountain, and nearly parallel with it, is the sharp single wall of Pine
Mountain, the westernmost ridge of the Alleghany system. For about
a hundred miles these two gnarled and ancient monsters lie
crouched side by side, guarding between them their hidden
stronghold of treasure—an immense valley of timbers and irons and
coals. Near the middle point of this inner wall there occurs a
geological fault. The mountain falls apart as though cut in twain by
some heavy downward stroke, showing on the faces of the fissure
precipitous sides wooded to the crests. There is thus formed the
celebrated and magnificent pass through which the Cumberland
River—one of the most beautiful in the land—slips silently out of its
mountain valley, and passes on to the hills and the plateaus of
Kentucky. In the gap there is a space for the bed of this river, and on
each side of the river space for a roadway and nothing more.
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![CUMBERLAND GAP.
Note the commanding situation of this inner pass. Travel east along
Pine Mountain or travel west, and you find no other water gap within
a hundred miles. Through this that thin, toiling line of pioneer
civilizers made its way, having scaled the great outer Cumberland
wall some fifteen miles southward. But for this single geological
fault, by which a water gap of the inner mountain was placed
opposite a depression in the outer mountain, thus creating a
continuous passway through both, the colonization of Kentucky,
difficult enough even with this advantage, would have been
indefinitely delayed, or from this side wholly impossible. Through
this inner portal was traced in time the regular path of the pioneers,
afterwards known as the Wilderness Road. On account of the travel
over this road and the controlling nature of the site, there was long
ago formed on the spot a little backwoods settlement, calling itself
Pineville. It consisted of a single straggling line of cabins and
shanties of logs on each side of a roadway, this road being the path
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![of the pioneers. In the course of time it was made the county-seat.
Being the county-seat, the way-side village, catching every traveller
on foot or on horse or in wagons, began some years ago to make
itself still better known as the scene of mountain feuds. The name of
the town when uttered anywhere in Kentucky suggested but one
thing—a blot on the civilization of the State, a mountain fastness
where the human problem seems most intractable. A few such
places have done more to foster the unfortunate impression which
Kentucky has made upon the outside world than all the towns of the
blue-grass country put together.
Five summers ago, in 1885, in order to prepare an article for Harper's
Magazine on the mountain folk of the Cumberland region, I made my
way towards this mountain town, now riding on a buck-board, now
on a horse whose back was like a board that was too stiff to buck.
The road I travelled was that great highway between Kentucky and
the South which at various times within a hundred years has been
known as the Wilderness Road, or the Cumberland Road, or the
National Turnpike, or the "Kaintuck Hog Road," as it was called by
the mountaineers. It is impossible to come upon this road without
pausing, or to write of it without a tribute. It led from Baltimore over
the mountains of Virginia through the great wilderness by
Cumberland Gap. All roads below Philadelphia converged at this gap,
just as the buffalo and Indian trails had earlier converged, and just
as many railroads are converging now. The improvement of this road
became in time the pet scheme of the State governments of Virginia
and Kentucky. Before the war millions of head of stock—horses,
hogs, cattle, mules—were driven over it to the southern markets;
and thousands of vehicles, with families and servants and trunks,
have somehow passed over it, coming northward into Kentucky, or
going southward on pleasure excursions. During the war vast
commissary stores passed back and forth, following the movement
of armies. But despite all this—despite all that has been done to
civilize it since Boone traced its course in 1790, this honored historic
thoroughfare remains to-day as it was in the beginning, with all its
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![sloughs and sands, its mud and holes, and jutting ledges of rock and
loose bowlders, and twists and turns, and general total depravity.
It is not surprising that when the original Kentuckians were settled
on the blue-grass plateau they sternly set about the making of good
roads, and to this day remain the best road-builders in America. One
such road was enough. They are said to have been notorious for
profanity, those who came into Kentucky from this side. Naturally.
Many were infidels—there are roads that make a man lose faith. It is
known that the more pious companies of them, as they travelled
along, would now and then give up in despair, sit down, raise a
hymn, and have prayers before they could go farther. Perhaps one of
the provocations to homicide among the mountain people should be
reckoned this road. I have seen two of the mildest of men, after
riding over it for a few hours, lose their temper and begin to fight—
fight their horses, fight the flies, fight the cobwebs on their noses,
fight anything.
Over this road, then, and towards this town, one day, five summers
ago, I was picking my course, but not without pale human
apprehensions. At that time one did not visit Pineville for nothing.
When I reached it I found it tense with repressed excitement. Only a
few days previous there had been a murderous affray in the streets;
the inhabitants had taken sides; a dead-line had been drawn
through the town, so that those living on either side crossed to the
other at the risk of their lives; and there was blue murder in the air. I
was a stranger; I was innocent; I was peaceful. But I was told that
to be a stranger and innocent and peaceful did no good. Stopping to
eat, I fain would have avoided, only it seemed best not to be
murdered for refusing. All that I now remember of the dinner was a
corn-bread that would have made a fine building stone, being of an
attractive bluish tint, hardening rapidly upon exposure to the
atmosphere, and being susceptible of a high polish. A block of this,
freshly quarried, I took, and then was up and away. But not quickly,
for having exchanged my horse for another, I found that the latter
moved off as though at every step expecting to cross the dead-line,
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![and so perish. The impression of the place was one never to be
forgotten, with its squalid hovels, its ragged armed men collected
suspiciously in little groups, with angry, distrustful faces, or peering
out from behind the ambush of a window.
A few weeks ago I went again to Pineville, this time by means of one
of the most extensive and powerful railroad systems of the South. At
the station a 'bus was waiting to take passengers to the hotel. The
station was on one side of the river, the hotel on the other. We were
driven across a new iron bridge, this being but one of four now
spanning the river formerly crossed at a single ford. At the hotel we
were received by a porter of metropolitan urbanity and self-esteem.
Entering the hotel, I found it lighted by gas, and full of guests from
different parts of the United States. In the lobby there was a
suppressed murmur of refined voices coming from groups engaged
in serious talk. As by-and-by I sat in a spacious dining-room, looking
over a freshly-printed bill of fare, some one in the parlors opposite
was playing on the piano airs from "Tannhäuser" and "Billee Taylor."
The dining-room was animated by a throng of brisk, tidy, white
young waiting-girls, some of whom were far too pretty to look at
except from behind a thick napkin; and presently, to close this
experience of the new Pineville, there came along such inconceivable
flannel-cakes and molasses that, forgetting industrial and social
problems, I gave myself up to the enjoyment of a problem personal
and gastric; and erelong, having spread myself between snowy
sheets, I melted away, as the butter between the cakes, into warm
slumber, having first poured over myself a syrup of thanksgiving.
The next morning I looked out of my window upon a long pleasant
valley, mountain-sheltered, and crossed by the winding Cumberland;
here and there cottages of a smart modern air already built or
building; in another direction, business blocks of brick and stone,
graded streets and avenues and macadamized roads; and
elsewhere, saw and planing mills, coke ovens, and other evidences
of commercial development. Through the open door of a church I
saw a Catholic congregation already on its knees, and the
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![worshippers of various Protestant denominations were looking
towards their own temples. The old Pineville, happily situated farther
down the river, at the very opening of the pass, was rapidly going to
ruins. The passion for homicide had changed into a passion for land
speculation. The very man on whose account at my former visit the
old Pineville had been divided into two deadly factions, whose name
throughout all the region once stood for mediæval violence, had
become a real-estate agent. I was introduced to him.
"Sir," said I, "I don't feel so very much afraid of you."
"Sir," said he, "I don't like to run myself."
Such, briefly, is the impression made by the new Pineville—a new
people there, new industries, new moral atmosphere, new
civilization.
The explanation of this change is not far to seek. By virtue of its
commanding position as the only inner gateway to the North, this
pass was the central point of distribution for south-eastern Kentucky.
Flowing into the Cumberland, on the north side of the mountain, is
Clear Creek, and on the south side is Strait Creek, the two principal
streams of this region, and supplying water-power and drainage.
Tributary to these streams are, say, half a million acres of noble
timber land; in the mountains around, the best coals, coking and
domestic; elsewhere, iron ores, pure brown, hematite, and
carbonates; inexhaustible quantities of limestone, blue-gray
sandstone, brick clays; gushing from the mountains, abundant
streams of healthful freestone water; on the northern hill-sides, a
deep loam suitable for grass and gardens and fruits. Add to this that
through this water-gap, following the path of the Wilderness Road,
as the Wilderness Road had followed the path of the Indian and the
buffalo—through this water-gap would have to pass all railroads that
should connect the North and South by means of that historic and
ancient highway of traffic and travel.
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![On the basis of these facts, three summers ago a few lawyers in
Louisville bought 300 acres of land near the riotous old town of
Pineville, and in the same summer was organized the Pine Mountain
Iron and Coal Company, which now, however, owns about twenty
thousand acres, with a capital stock of $2,000,000. It should be
noted that Southern men and native capital began this enterprise,
and that although other stockholders are from Chicago and New
England, most of the capital remains in the State. Development has
been rapidly carried forward, and over five hundred thousand
dollars' worth of lots have been sold the present year. It is pleasant
to dwell upon the future that is promised for this place; pleasant to
hear that over six hundred acres in this pleasant valley are to be
platted; that there are to be iron-furnaces and electric lights,
concrete sidewalks and a street railway, more bridges, brick-yards,
and a high-school; and that the seventy-five coke ovens now in blast
are to be increased to a thousand. Let it be put down to the credit of
this vigorous little mountain town that it is the first place in that
region to put Kentucky coke upon the market, and create a wide
demand for it in remote quarters—Cincinnati alone offering to take
the daily output of 500 ovens.
Thus the industrial and human problems are beginning to solve
themselves side by side in the backwoods of Kentucky. You begin
with coke and end with Christianity. It is the boast of Pineville that
as soon as it begins to make its own iron it can build its houses
without calling on the outside world for an ounce of material.
III
Middlesborough! For a good many years in England and throughout
the world the name has stood associated with wealth and
commercial greatness—the idea of a powerful city near the mouth of
the Tees, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, which has become the
principal seat of the English iron trade. It is therefore curious to
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![remember that near the beginning of the century there stood on the
site of this powerful city four farm-houses and a ruined shrine of St.
Hilda; that it took thirty years to bring the population up to the
number of one hundred and fifty-four souls; that the discovery of
ironstone, as it seems to be called on that side, gave it a boom, as it
is called on this; so that ten years ago it had some sixty thousand
people, its hundred and thirty blast-furnaces, besides other
industries, and an annual output in pig-iron of nearly two million
tons.
But there is now an English Middlesborough in America, which is
already giving to the name another significance in the stock market
of London and among the financial journals of the realm; and if the
idea of its founders is ever realized, if its present rate of
development goes on, it will in time represent as much wealth in
gold and iron as the older city.
In the mere idea of the American or Kentucky Middlesborough—for
while it seems to be meant for America, it is to be found in Kentucky
—there is something to arrest attention on the score of originality.
That the attention of wealthy commoners, bankers, scientists, and
iron-masters of Great Britain—some of them men long engaged in
copper, tin, and gold mines in the remotest quarters of the globe—
that the attention of such men should be focussed on a certain spot
in the backwoods of Kentucky; that they should repeatedly send
over experts to report on the combination of mineral and timber
wealth; that on the basis of such reports they should form
themselves into a company called "The American Association,
Limited," and purchase 60,000 acres of land lying on each side of
the Cumberland Mountain, and around the meeting-point of the
States of Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky; that an allied
association, called "The Middlesborough Town Company," should
place here the site of a city, with the idea of making it the principal
seat of the iron and steel manufacture of the United States; that
they should go to work to create this city outright by pouring in
capital for every needed purpose; that they should remove gigantic
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![obstacles in order to connect it with the national highways of
commerce; that they should thus expend some twenty million
dollars, and let it be known that all millions further wanted were
forthcoming—in the idea of this there is enough to make one pause.
As one cannot ponder the idea of the enterprise without being
impressed with its largeness, so one cannot visit the place without
being struck by the energy with which the plan is being wrought at.
"It is not sufficient to know that this property possesses coal and
iron of good quality and in considerable quantities, and that the
deposits are situated close together, but that they exist in such
circumstances as will give us considerable advantages over any
competitors that either now exist or whose existence can in any way
be foreseen in the near future." Such were the instructions of these
English capitalists to their agent in America. It was characteristic of
their race and of that method of business by which they have
become the masters of commerce the world over. In it is the germ of
their idea—to establish a city for the manufacture of iron and steel
which, by its wealth of resources, advantages of situation, and
complete development, should place competition at a disadvantage,
and thus make it impossible.
It yet remains to be seen whether this can be done. Perhaps even
the hope of it came from an inadequate knowledge of how vast a
region they had entered, and how incalculable its wealth. Perhaps it
was too much to expect that any one city, however situated,
however connected, however developed, should be able to absorb or
even to control the development of that region and the distribution
of its resources to all points of the land. It suggests the idea of a
single woodpecker's hoping to carry off the cherries from a tree
which a noble company of cats and jays and other birds were
watching; or of a family of squirrels who should take up their abode
in a certain hole with the idea of eating all the walnuts in a forest.
But however this may turn out, these Englishmen, having once set
before themselves their aim, have never swerved from trying to
attain it; and they are at work developing their city with the hope
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![that it will bring as great a change in the steel market of the United
States as a few years ago was made in the iron market by the
manufacture of Southern iron.
If you take up in detail the working out of their plan of development,
it is the same—no stint, no drawing back or swerving aside, no
abatement of the greatest intentions. They must have a site for their
city—they choose for this site what with entire truthfulness may be
called one of the most strategic mountain passes in American
history. They must have a name—they choose that of the principal
seat of the English iron trade. They must have a plant for the
manufacture of steel by the basic process—they promise it shall be
the largest in the United States. They want a tannery—it shall be the
biggest in the world. A creek has to be straightened to improve
drainage—they spend on it a hundred thousand dollars. They will
have their mineral resources known—they order a car to be built,
stock it with an exposition of their minerals, place it in charge of
technical experts, and set it going over the country. They take a
notion to establish a casino, sanitarium, and hotel—it must cost over
seven hundred thousand dollars. The mountain is in their way—that
mighty wall of the Cumberland Mountain which has been in the way
of the whole United States for over a hundred years—they remove
this mountain; that is, they dig through it a great union tunnel, 3750
feet long, beginning in Kentucky, running under a corner of Virginia,
and coming out in Tennessee. Had they done nothing but this, they
would have done enough to entitle them to the gratitude of the
nation, for it is an event of national importance. It brings the South
and the Atlantic seaboard in connection with the Ohio Valley and the
Lakes; it does more to make the North and the South one than any
other single thing that has happened since the close of the Civil War.
On the same trip that took me to Pineville five summers ago, I rode
from that place southward towards the wall of Cumberland
Mountain. I wished to climb this wall at that vast depression in it
known as Cumberland Gap. It was a tranquil afternoon as I took my
course over the ancient Wilderness Road through the valley of the
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![Yellow Creek. Many a time since, the memory of that ride has come
back to me—the forests of magnificent timbers, open spaces of
cleared land showing the amphitheatre of hills in the purple
distance, the winding of a shadowy green-banked stream, the
tranquil loneliness, the purity of primeval solitude. The flitting of a
bird between one and the azure sky overhead was company, a wild
flower bending over the water's edge was friendship. Nothing broke
rudely in upon the spirit of the scene but here and there a way-side
log-cabin, with its hopeless squalor, hopeless human inmates. If
imagination sought relief from loneliness, it found it only in conjuring
from the dust of the road that innumerable caravan of life from
barbarism to civilization, from the savage to the soldier, that has
passed hither and thither, leaving the wealth of nature unravished,
its solitude unbroken.
In the hush of the evening and amid the silence of eternity, I drew
the rein of my tired horse on the site of the present town. Before me
in the mere distance, and outlined against the glory of the sky, there
towered at last the mighty mountain wall, showing the vast
depression of the gap—the portal to the greatness of the
commonwealth. Stretching away in every direction was a wide plain,
broken here and there by wooded knolls, and uniting itself with
graceful curves to the gentle slopes of the surrounding mountains.
The ineffable beauty, the vast repose, the overawing majesty of the
historic portal, the memories, the shadows—they are never to be
forgotten.
[297]
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![sanitarium, and casino which shall equal in sumptuousness the most
noted European spas.
As I stood one day in this valley, which has already begun to put on
the air of civilization, with its hotel and railway station and mills and
pretty hometeads, I saw a sight which seemed to me a complete
epitome of the past and present tendencies there at work—a
summing up of the past and a prophecy of the future. Creeping
slowly past the station—so slowly that one knows not what to
compare it to unless it be the minute-hand on the dial of a clock—
creeping slowly along the Wilderness Road towards the ascent of
Cumberland Gap, there came a mountain wagon, faded and old,
with its dirty ragged canvas hanging motionless, and drawn by a
yoke of mountain oxen which seemed to be moving in their sleep.
On the seat in front, with a faded shovel-hat capping his mass of
coarse tangled hair, and wearing but two other garments—a faded
shirt and faded breeches—sat a faded, pinched, and meagre
mountain boy. The rope with which he drove his yoke had dropped
between his clasped knees. He had forgotten it; there was no need
to remember it. His starved white face was kindled into an
expression of passionate hunger and excitement. In one dirty claw-
like hand he grasped a small paper bag, into the open mouth of
which he had thrust the other hand, as a miser might thrust his into
a bag of gold. He had just bought, with a few cents, some
sweetmeat of civilization which he was about for the first time to
taste. I sat and watched him move away and begin the ascent to the
pass. Slowly, slowly, winding now this way and now that across the
face of the mountain, now hidden, now in sight, they went—sleeping
oxen, crawling wagon, starved mountain child. At length, as they
were about disappearing through the gap, they passed behind a
column of the white steam from a saw-mill that was puffing a short
distance in front of me; and, hidden in that steam, they disappeared.
It was the last of the mountaineers passing away before the breath
of civilization.
[300]
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![IV
Suppose now that you stand on the south side of the great wall of
the Cumberland Mountain at Cumberland Gap. You have come
through the splendid tunnel beneath, or you have crawled over the
summit in the ancient way; but you stand at the base on the
Tennessee side in the celebrated Powell's River Valley.
Turn to the left and follow up this valley, keeping the mountain on
your left. You are not the first to take this course: the line of human
ants used to creep down it in order to climb over the wall at the gap.
Mark how inaccessible this wall is at every other point. Mark, also,
that as you go two little black parallel iron threads follow you—a
railroad, one of the greatest systems of the South. All along the
mountain slope overhanging the railroad, iron ore; beyond the
mountain crest, timbers and coals. Observe, likewise, the features of
the land: water abundant, clear, and cold; fields heavy with corn and
oats; an ever-changing panorama of beautiful pictures. The farther
you go the more rich and prosperous the land, the kinder the soil to
grains and gardens and orchards; bearing its burden of timbers—
walnut, chestnut, oak, and mighty beeches; lifting to the eye in the
near distance cultivated hillsides and fat meadows; stretching away
into green and shadowy valley glades; tuneful with swift, crystal
streams—a land of lovely views.
Remember well this valley, lying along the base of the mountain
wall. It has long been known as the granary of south-west Virginia
and east Tennessee; but in time, in the development of civilization
throughout the Appalachian region, it is expected to become the
seat of a dense pastoral population, supplying the dense industrial
population of new mining and manufacturing towns with milk, butter,
eggs, and fruit and vegetables. But for the contiguity of such
agricultural districts to the centres of ores and coals, it would
perhaps be impossible to establish in these remote spots the cities
necessary to develop and transport their wealth.
[302]](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1068595-250601143224-5ff8f869/85/Managing-Projects-In-Telecommunication-Services-1st-Edition-Mostafa-Hashem-Sherif-80-320.jpg)
![Follow this valley up for a distance of sixty miles from Cumberland
Gap and there pause, for you come to the head of the valley, and
you have reached another pass in the mountain wall. You have
passed out of Tennessee into Virginia, a short distance from the
Kentucky border, and the mountain wall is no longer called the
Cumberland: twenty miles southwest of where you now are that
mountain divided, sending forth this southern prong, called Stone
Mountain, and sending the rest of itself between the State line of
Kentucky and Virginia, under the name of the Big Black Mountain.
Understand, also, the general bearings of the spot at which you have
arrived. It is in that same Alleghany system of mountains—the
richest metalliferous region in the world—the northern section of
which long ago made Pittsburgh; the southern section of which has
since created Birmingham; and the middle section of which, where
you now are, is claimed by expert testimony, covering a long period
of years and coming from different and wholly uninterested
authorities, to be the richest of the three.
This mountain pass not being in Kentucky, it might be asked why in
a series of articles on Kentucky it should deserve a place. The
answer is plain: not because a Kentuckian selected it as the site of a
hoped for city, or because Kentuckians have largely developed it, or
because Kentuckians largely own it, and have stamped upon it a
certain excellent social tone; but for the reason that if the idea of its
development is carried out, it will gather towards itself a vast net-
work of railways from eastern Kentucky, the Atlantic seaboard, the
South, and the Ohio and Mississippi valleys, which will profoundly
affect the inner life of Kentucky, and change its relations to different
parts of the Union.
Big Stone Gap! It does not sound very big. What is it? At a certain
point of this continuation of Cumberland Mountain, called Stone
Mountain, the main fork of Powell's River has in the course of ages
worn itself a way down to a practical railroad pass at water-level,
thus opening connection between the coking coal on the north and
the iron ores on the south of the mountain. No pass that I have ever
[303]
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![seen—except those made by the Doe River in the Cranberry region
of North Carolina—has its wild, enrapturing loveliness; towering
above on each side are the mountain walls, ancient and gray and
rudely disordered; at every coign of vantage in these, grasping their
precipitous buttresses as the claw of a great eagle might grasp the
uttermost brow of a cliff, enormous trees above trees, and amid the
trees a green lace-work of undergrowth. Below, in a narrow, winding
channel piled high with bowlders, with jutting rocks and sluice-like
fissures—below and against these the river hurls itself, foaming,
roaring, whirling, a long cascade of white or lucent water. This is Big
Stone Gap, and the valley into which the river pours its full strong
current is the site of the town. A lofty valley it is, having an elevation
of 1600 feet above the sea, with mountains girdling it that rise to
the height of 4000—a valley the surface of which gently rolls and
slopes towards these encircling bases with constant relief to the eye,
and spacious enough, with those opening into it, to hold a city of the
population of New York.
This mountain pass, lying in the heart of this reserved wilderness of
timbers, coals, and ores, has always had its slender thread of local
history. It was from a time immemorial a buffalo and Indian trail,
leading to the head-waters of the Cumberland and Kentucky rivers;
during the Civil War it played its part in certain local military exploits
and personal adventures of a quixotian flavor; and of old the rich
farmers of Lee County used to drive their cattle through it to fatten
on the pea-vine and blue-grass growing thick on the neighboring
mountain tops. But in the last twenty-five years—that quarter of the
century which has developed in the United States an ever-growing
need of iron and steel, of hard-woods, and of all varieties of coal; a
period which has seen one after another of the reserve timber
regions of the country thinned and exhausted—during the past
twenty-five years attention has been turned more and more towards
the forests and the coal-fields in the region occupied by the south
Alleghany Mountain system.
[305]](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1068595-250601143224-5ff8f869/85/Managing-Projects-In-Telecommunication-Services-1st-Edition-Mostafa-Hashem-Sherif-82-320.jpg)
Managing Projects In Telecommunication Services 1st Edition Mostafa Hashem Sherif
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- 5. MANAGING PROJECTS IN TELECOMMUNICATION SERVICES Mostafa Hashem Sherif IEEE Communications Society, Sponsor A JOHN WILEY & SONS, INC., PUBLICATION IEEE PRESS
- 8. IEEE Press 445 Hoes Lane Piscataway, NJ 08854 IEEE Press Editorial Board Mohamed E. El-Hawary, Editor in Chief J. B. Anderson S. V. Kartalopoulos N. Schulz R. J. Baker M. Montrose C. Singh T. G. Croda M. S. Newman G. Zobrist R. J. Herrick F. M. B. Pereira Kenneth Moore, Director of IEEE Book and Information Services (BIS) Catherine Faduska, Senior Acquisitions Editor Steve Welch, Acquisitions Editor Jeanne Audino, Project Editor IEEE Communications Society, Sponsor IEEE CS Liaison to IEEE Press, Mansoor Shafi Technical Reviewers Audrey Curtis, Stevens Institute of Technology Rod Castillo, AT&T Robert J. Ferro, AT&T Tom Helstern, AT&T Clement McCalla, AT&T Fahad Najam, AT&T Michael Recchia, AT&T Cathy Savolaine, AT&T (retired)
- 9. MANAGING PROJECTS IN TELECOMMUNICATION SERVICES Mostafa Hashem Sherif IEEE Communications Society, Sponsor A JOHN WILEY & SONS, INC., PUBLICATION IEEE PRESS
- 10. Copyright © 2006 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. All rights reserved. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey. Published simultaneously in Canada. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 750-4470, or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748- 6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permission. Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages. For general information on our other products and services or for technical support, please contact our Customer Care Department within the United States at (800) 762-2974, outside the United States at (317) 572- 3993 or fax (317) 572-4002. Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available. ISBN-13 978-0-471-71343-2 ISBN-10 0-471-71343-0 Printed in the United States of America. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 available in electronic format. For information about Wiley products, visit our web site at www.wiley.com.
- 11. Foreword xiii Preface xv 1 Projects in Telecommunication Services 1 Introduction 1 Project Management Versus Product Management 1 Virtual Network Operators 3 Contribution of Project Management 4 The Two Facets of Telecommunication Services 5 Categories of Projects in Telecommunication Services 6 Upgrades of Public Networks 7 Establishment of Specialized Business Networks 8 Temporary Networks 10 Characteristics of Telecommunication Service Projects 11 Complex Interfaces 11 External Interfaces 11 Internal Interfaces 12 International Orientation 15 Multidisciplinarity 15 No Mass Production 16 Diverse Users 16 A Relatively Long Planning Stage 17 Summary of Distinctions Between the Development of 17 Telecommunication Services and Equipment Summary 17 v CONTENTS
- 12. 2 Standards and Innovation in Telecommunication Services 19 The Two Dimensions of Telecommunication Projects 19 The Technological Dimension 19 The Marketing and Social Dimension 22 Classification of Innovations 23 Innovations and the Technology Life Cycle 25 Innovation in Telecommunication Services 26 Incremental Innovation 27 Architectural Innovation 28 Platform Innovation 30 Radical Innovation 30 Interaction of Innovations in Equipment and Services 30 Phasic Relation Between Equipment and Services 31 Standardization for Telecommunication Services 34 Timing of Standards 35 Marketing Perspective 35 Technological View of Standards 35 Anticipatory Standards 36 Enabling (Participatory) Standards 37 Responsive Standards 38 Lack of Standards 38 Standards Policy and Knowledge Management 39 Summary 40 3 The Project Management Context 43 Organization of the Project Team 43 Functional Organization 44 Examples 45 Advantages 47 Disadvantages 47 Matrix Organization 47 Examples 48 Advantages 50 Disadvantages 50 Projectized Organization 50 Examples 51 Advantages 51 Disadvantages 51 Comparison of Project Organizations 52 Project Organization and Innovation Type 52 Incremental Innovation 52 Architectural Innovation 53 Platform Innovation 54 Radical Innovation 54 The Role of the Project Sponsor 54 Phase Management and Portfolio Management 56 The Rolling Wave Method for Service Development 56 vi CONTENTS
- 13. Phase 1: Concept Definition 57 Phase 2: Initiation and Preliminary Planning Phase 58 Phase 3: Implementation 58 Phase 4: Controlled Introduction 58 59 Canceling Projects 59 Relation to the Build–Operate–Transfer Model 59 Summary 60 4 Scope Management 61 Scope Initiation 62 Scope Planning 62 Market Service Description (MSD) 62 Scope Definition 63 Work Breakdown Structure 63 Technical Plan 64 The Need for Scope Management 66 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics 66 E-Zpass Toll Collection System 66 Background 66 Gaps in the Definition ITS Scope 67 Scope Creep in New Jersey 68 Sources of Scope Change 68 Customer Profile 69 Vendor’s Effect 69 Basic Principles of Scope Management 69 Change Control Policy 71 Strictness of the Change Control Policy 71 Change Control Board 72 Scope Verification 72 Tracking and Issue Management 72 Project Termination 73 Case Studies 74 Telecommunications Alliances/Joint Ventures 74 Net 1000 76 Background 77 Timeline and Organization Evolution 78 Postmortem Analysis 80 Lessons Learned 84 Lessons Not Learned 84 Summary 85 5 Time and Cost Management 87 Scheduling 87 Delays in Telecommunication Projects 88 Compressing the Schedule 89 Cost Management 90 CONTENTS vii Phase 5: General Availability and Close-Out
- 14. Project Tracking with Earned Value Analysis 91 Metrics for the Earned Value 92 Discrete Effort Method 92 Apportioned Effort Method 93 Level of Effort Method 93 Budget Types 93 Monitoring Project Progress 93 Measures of Efficiency 94 Prerequisites for Earned Value Analysis 95 Earned Value Analysis in Telecommunication Projects 95 Summary 97 6 Information and Communication Management 99 The Role of Communication Management 99 Dissemination of Information 100 Team Cohesion 100 Historical Database 101 Communication and Outsourcing 101 The Communication Plan 102 Audience 102 Circumstances 103 Nature of Information 103 Content of the Plan 104 Communication Channels 104 One-on-One Communication 105 Meetings 105 Telephony and Teleconferences 107 E-Mail 107 Intranets and Project Portals 107 Evaluation of the Communication Processes 108 Measure of Communication Effectiveness 108 Signs of Communication Problems 108 Barriers to Successful Communications 109 Summary 109 7 Resources Management 111 Formation of the Project Team 111 Team Building 116 Team Building and the Hierarchy of Human Needs 116 Signs of a Jelled Team 117 Enablers of Team Cohesiveness 117 Impediments to Team Consolidation 118 No Self-Actualization 118 No Self-Esteem 118 No Belongingness 119 No Security 119 Team Breakup (Adjourning) 119 Project Leadership 119 viii CONTENTS
- 15. Transactional Versus Transformational Leadership 120 Project Manager’s Authority 120 Manipulative Behavior 120 MBTI Classification of Leadership Styles 121 Time-Dependent Leadership 123 Matching Leadership Style with the Project Phase 123 Matching Leadership Style with Innovation Type 124 Matching Leadership with Technology Maturity 125 Conflict Resolution 126 Conflicts Due to Contractual Structures 126 Conflicts Due to Connectual Structures 127 Types of Diversity 127 Examples of Social Diversity 128 Examples of Informational Diversity 128 Examples of Value Diversity 129 Conflicts and Diversity 130 Effects of Conflict on Project Performance 130 Dealing with Conflicts 132 Problem Solving 132 Coercion 132 Compromise 132 Accommodation 132 Withdrawal or Avoidance 132 Summary 133 8 Quality Management 135 Overview 135 Quality and Innovation 136 Service Release Management 137 Quality Plan 138 Categorization of the Defects: Urgency and Criticality 139 Appraisal 141 Schedule Compression 144 Evaluation of Testing Progress 145 When to Stop Testing? 145 Vendor Management During the Testing Program 148 Summary 150 Appendix 151 Poisson Model 151 The Basic Model 152 The Jelinski–Moranda Model 152 Deployability 153 Learning Effect with the Yamada Model 154 9 Vendor Management 157 The Importance of Vendor Management 157 Vendor Management Versus Procurement Management 157 CONTENTS ix
- 16. Acquisition Process 158 Evaluation of the Formal Solicitation Process 160 Vendor Selection 160 Contract Type 161 Vendor Types in Telecommunications Services 161 Vendor Evaluation 162 Additional Criteria for Equipment Vendors 164 Additional Criteria for Connectivity Vendors 164 Communications with Technology Vendors 165 Statement of Work 165 Vendor Tracking 166 Partnerships and Virtual Organizations 166 Metrics for Vendor Tracking During Acceptance Testing 168 Vendor’s Handoff 169 Metrics for Vendor Tracking for Problems in the Field 169 Risks in the Management of Technology Vendors 170 The Technology Life Cycle 170 Vendor Type 170 Risk of Supply Disruption 171 Congruence of the Plans for the Vendor and the Service Provider 171 Lack of Standards 172 Intellectual Property and Knowledge Management 172 Inadequate Field Support 173 Risk Mitigation in the Management of Technology Vendor 173 Connectivity Vendors 174 Types of Agreements Among Network Operators 174 Risks Management for Interconnectivity Vendors 174 Summary 175 10 Risk Management 177 Risk Identification 178 Risk Evaluation 178 Risk Mitigation 180 Risk Avoidance 180 Risk Reduction 180 Combined Risk Avoidance and Reduction 181 Risk Deflection 181 Risk Financing 182 Risks Identification Telecommunications Services 183 Project Characteristics 184 Complexity 184 Schedule 184 Novelty 185 Geography 185 Internal Organization 185 Technology 186 Supplier 187 Customer 187 x CONTENTS
- 17. Risk Mitigation in Telecommunications Services 187 Risks Due to Project Characteristics 187 Technological Risks 188 Supplier’s Risks 189 Customer’s Risks 189 Standardization and Risk 189 Innovation and Risk 191 Incremental Innovation 191 Architectural Innovation 192 Platform Innovation 193 Radical Innovation 193 Risk Mitigation and Organizational Culture 193 Risk Mitigation and the Project Manager’s Tolerance for Risk 194 Summary 194 11 Service Development 197 Opportunity Analysis and Concept Definition 197 Product Definition and Project Setup 198 Design and Procurement 199 Architecture Design 199 Supplier Management 200 Technical Definition of the Service 202 Site Selection 202 Service Operations Technical Plan (SOTP) 202 Support Processes 203 Operations, Administration and Maintenance (OA&M) 205 Disaster Recovery 207 Customer Network Management 209 Development 209 Equipment Handoff 210 System and Integration Testing 210 Network Operations Center (NOC) 211 Human Resources 211 Return Maintenance Authorization (RMA) 211 Customer Care 211 Service Turn-Up 212 Installing the Equipment 212 In-Field Tests 212 Pilot Trials 213 Controlled Introduction 214 Management of the Controlled Introduction 214 Marketing and Sales Plans for General Availability 215 Commissioning and Life-Cycle Management 217 Lessons Learned and Closeout 217 Quality-of-Service Metrics 217 Customer Care Performance 219 Network Performance 219 OA&M Quality 219 CONTENTS xi
- 18. Business and Network Evolution 219 Summary 221 Appendix 221 12 Some Final Thoughts 223 Continuity and Change 223 Project Success or Service Success? 224 Competition and Government Policies 225 Standardization 227 Outsourcing 228 References 229 Index 239 xii CONTENTS
- 19. If ever there was a “tip of the iceberg” in industry, telecommunications is it. Probably just a few people in the world wouldn’t know what telecommunications are, most from direct experience, some from hearsay. However there are even less people who appreciate what behind the scene in telecommunications is like; what is the magic that lets anyone pick up a phone almost wherever on the Earth and with a few pushes on the phone’s keys, connect with people on the other side of the globe or just few supermarket shelves away, as so of- ten is the case. Now, if you ask people about this magic, probably 100% will tell you that, although they do not understand the what and why, surely technology is what makes this telecom- munications clock tick. None is likely to think about the clock master, the people that run the show. And what a show it is. We have in Italy (you can do the multiplication for the worldwide figures) 40 million pairs of fixed lines to reach 26 million users. Add 56 million clients using cell phones connected via more than 20,000 base stations. The length of copper and fiber lines is mea- sured in millions of kilometers, and you’ve got to know where each single meter of cable lies. You have to know about the hundreds of thousands of pieces of equipment, keeping track of thousands of maintenance vans; take into account the skill of every one of the tens of thousands of people making the telecommunications magic invisible to the users. And once you have taken all of this into account, you have not even started yet. Some of my friends are from the computer world and they use to brag about how good they are when you consider innovation and speed of innovation. Their COMDEX meeting is a twice-a-year event; by comparison the ITU Telecom Fair (the planetary equivalent of COMDEX in telecommunications) takes place once every four years. They tell me, xiii FOREWORD
- 20. “Look at computer shops windows. Every other month there is something new on the shelves.” In telecommunications everything seems to evolve at a snail’s pace. Actually this is all true and completely wrong. The view we take at the computer world is a micro view: We look at the single PC and at the new models coming out. If we were to look at all the PCs disseminated in offices and homes, we would see an evolution that is much slower. It takes probably four years to find a significantly changed environment. Same goes for telecommunications. We usually look at them in a holistic way and as such evolution is perceived in years. Were we to look at micro level, at single equipment, we would discover that not a single week goes by without a significant update in the network. There are literally hundreds of services and a beehive of activities every single day in deploying, testing, activating, maintaining these services. Now we are getting closer to the foundation of the “magic.” Design of new services and products is a never-ending ac- tivity in telecommunications. And in the last 10 years, it has become even more so, with no sign of relenting in the next decade; rather the opposite. It has been said that telecommunications are neutral, their goal is to provide platforms that anyone and any business can use. Indeed that is the case. But more and more, serving the business and the variety of people’s needs requires a much broader view. Designing a new service has to take into account what people want, what kind of terminals they have and are likely to have in the next few years, what kind of infrastructure is and will be available here and on the other side of the world. Such a task cannot be handled by one engineer. It requires a variety of skills, the blending of competence coming from different people that have to cluster into a team. It is the success of this team that leads to the success of the industry in the market place. And this is what this book is about. Tearing away the veil of magic to show how we can make sure that the magic will continue on and on. Of course, it is not about magic. It is about “biz.” The U.S. voice market in 2005 has exceeded $100 billion. That voice biz is expected to decline in the coming years under competitive pressure and shrunk by the Internet VoIP plus unlicensed providers deploy- ing myriads of access networks. The challenge is to keep the overall telecom biz at the current levels, in spite of that decrease (optimists would rather say to increase the present telecom biz). This can only be done by offering new services, by entering into vertical markets, by supporting other value chains in increasing their productivity and thus divert- ing part of the decreased cost to telecoms’ pockets. All of this requires a deep understanding of processes, of the tasks involved in a ser- vice life cycle, from inception to demise. It will require project management at its best . . . read on. ROBERTO SARACCO Trends and Scientific Communications Director Telecom Italia xiv FOREWORD
- 21. PREFACE xv Bringing into existence an idea or a conceptual design is typically a collective endeavor of a group of people with the necessary expertise and dexterity. The efficacy of such an ad hoc association in achieving its mission can be fostered by conscious steps to optimize the organization and partition of work, to harmonize organizational objectives with individ- ual opinions, to smoothen internal conflicts, and to navigate external pressures. The logi- cal consequence is that a balanced mixture of “hard” and “soft” knowledge gained from disciplines ranging from engineering and statistics to industrial psychology and anthro- pology can improve the conduct of projects and enhance their chances of success. The worldwide wave of deregulation has exposed hitherto vertically integrated struc- tures to competitive forces. Previously impregnable positions have become exposed as the workflow was restructured to delocalize activities and to outsource peripheral func- tions. While production systems are becoming more complex and interdependent and their potential failures more compelling, the organizational interfaces are being revised, updated, or re-engineered. Not surprisingly, project management was propelled to the fore as a disciplined approach to face change, undertake continuous improvement, navi- gate cross currents, and reduce susceptibility to risks. The last decade has witnessed a quantitative jump in related publications, conferences, and academic programs, along with a worldwide surge in the number of professionals certified by the Project Manage- ment Institute (PMI); some companies even reorganized around project teams. Even though in many countries a large majority of the workforce is now engaged in service activities and, particularly in the Western world, the contribution of the service sector to the Gross National Product (GNP) is more than twice that of manufacturing (around 68% versus 30% respectively), projects in industrial design and production have captured most of the interest. The literature on services in general, and telecommunication
- 22. services in particular, is rather sparse, with discussions mostly focused on the competitive advantages of advanced telecommunications and a global information infrastructure. In fact, I was able to locate only one title in English devoted exclusively to the subject: Telecommunications Project Management by James B. Pruitt published in 1987 and now out of date and out of print, although Ellen Ward (1998) provided an excellent description of the service development process and Celia L. Desmond (2004) gave a reference guide for business managers to the telecommunication environment. Stéphane Calé (2005) pro- vides some up-to-date discussions on the management of risks, quality, and faults in mod- ern networks, but his book—in French—is restricted to enterprise networks. An unfortunate consequence of this lacuna has been the lack of awareness of the specifics that can make or break projects in telecommunication services. To many deci- sion-makers, it is sufficient to deploy advance equipment, string them with fiber optics, and run popular applications. From that perspective, the service of selling hotdogs or de- livering milk is indistinguishable from that of offering a reliable, affordable, and ubiqui- tous telecommunication infrastructure. This book is an attempt to fill this gap; its ambition is to provide an integrated method- ology to help managers of projects in telecommunication services to make informed deci- sions. It is based on extensive real-world experience with diverse telecommunication projects to provide practical insight on the issues that face project managers. It draws on a wide range of disciplines from telecommunications to organization management, as well as from motivation to quality control and software reliability engineering. This is not, however, a compendium of recipes, because in a rapidly changing world, it is not possible to figure out all situations and chart out step-by-step solutions to the various combination of problems that may arise. The book is organized in three main parts as follows: Chapters 1–3, 4–10, and 11–12. The purpose of the first part is to position telecommunication services taking into account the technology life cycle, the type of innovation, and the project organization. Chapter 1 gives what separates projects in service development from those for equipment develop- ment, a distinction that escapes many. Chapter 2 extends the literature on innovation and the technology life cycle to the area of telecommunication services, with a special empha- sis on standards as essential building blocks for end-to-end service transparency. Chapter 3 describes the need to tailor the project organizational arrangement to the type of innova- tion to ensure that the right information reaches to the right people at the right time. Chapters 4–10 cover the areas that the PMI had standardized in its publication A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide). The subjects are dis- cussed in the following sequence: scope, schedule and cost, information and communica- tion, human resources, quality, vendor management (procurement), and risk. Rather than repeating material readily available in the hundreds of books on general project manage- ment, the focus will be on the issues specific to telecommunication services and supple- ments to the classical lore from the literature on the management of technical innovation. Inevitably, the treatment is based on my own personal experience (because the corpus of the subject is still fluid); the hope, however, is that the material presented will be useful to a large number of telecommunication project managers. Chapter 11 is an integration of all these concepts for the planning and delivery of a project. Chapter 12 summarizes the main ideas of the book with a look toward trends. I have tried to write the chapters in such a way that the reader can read them indepen- dently. This is why some material or discussions are repeated in more than one chapter. Hopefully, this will reinforce some of the key points on tying the innovation to the tech- xvi PREFACE
- 23. nology life cycle, the effect of culture on project management, or risk assessment. If not, I would then ask the reader’s indulgence and advise on how to make the repetition less te- dious. The first time I realized the need for such a book was in 1996–1997 while working in Turkey as part of a team from what was then called AT&T Value-Added Services. My collaboration and long discussions with Steve Pollack and Alex Zwahlen influenced the notes that formed an early precursor of Chapter 11. Chapter 8 incorporates quality prac- tices developed and tested on real projects with David Hoeflin and Michael Recchia. Throughout the years, I was fortunate to meet and have discussions with numerous dis- tinguished colleagues from many companies and various countries, in academia, industry, and standard organizations. I attempted to distill their insights, for which I remain deeply grateful, into the various chapters. Their list is too long to mention by name, lest I omit some by mistake. Therefore, I will restrict the acknowledgments to those who directly commented on the various drafts of the book. They are: Professor Audrey Curtis from Stevens Institute of Technology; and Rod Castillo, Robert J. Ferro, Thomas K. Helstern, Dr. Clement McCalla, and Fahad Najam from AT&T. Michael Recchia, my previous su- pervisor, gave me useful suggestions on the treatment of risks. Cathy Savolaine, a retired department head at AT&T Bell Laboratories and AT&T Laboratories, read the whole manuscript twice and recommended the addition of what is now Chapter 12. The title came from Fred Burg, another retired colleague from AT&T, over coffee and bagels after a weekend run. At one time, AT&T had an excellent research library. I was lucky to collect most of the necessary data before AT&T management unfortunately decided that they no longer needed a first-class reseach library. Jane Bogdan, who was the librarian at that time, helped in locating hard-to-find references; so did Hsiao-Chuan (Cathy) Wu from AT&T Information Research Center. Catherine Faduska, Senior Acquisitions Editor, guided the book proposal through my publisher, Wiley-IEEE Press. MOSTAFA HASHEM SHERIF Tinton Falls, New Jersey July 2006 PREFACE xvii
- 25. INTRODUCTION The telecommunications industry spans many different activities that fall into two main categories: building equipment and using that equipment to connect people and machines. Both equipment manufacturers and service providers are regulated in one way or another, although the degree of regulation varies with the dominant political ideology as well as the markets. While at a certain level of abstraction, all projects can be treated with the same approach, generic techniques need to be supplemented with scrupulous attention to details specific to the industry; one approach cannot fit all possible situations, and cus- tomization or original development may be needed for specific situations. The purpose of this chapter is to increase the reader’s understanding of the nature of projects in telecom- munication services and highlight what distinguishes them from those in equipment de- sign and development. We start by clarifying a few terms from the project literature and then provide several examples to illustrate the common characteristics of service projects. We end the chapter by contrasting projects in telecommunication services with those that are related to the development of equipment. Project Management Versus Product Management Projects are temporary endeavors undertaken to create a unique product or service. Pro- ject management is the application of knowledge, skills, techniques, and tools to align the resources and skills needed to achieve the objectives of the project within specific con- Managing Projects in Telecommunication Services. By Mostafa Hashem Sherif 1 Copyright © 2006 The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. 1 PROJECTS IN TELECOMMUNICATION SERVICES
- 26. straints of cost, time, and quality. It portrays a disciplined approach to integrate various data elements describing the project and draw a coherent picture of its status to guide de- cisions. Product management, in contrast, is related to all aspects of a product line includ- ing life-cycle management of existing products as well as the development of new prod- ucts to achieve a competitive advantage [Gorchels, 2003]. Historically, the discipline of project management was applied first in construction, then in large government projects such as defense, as well as in the chemical and phar- maceutical industries. Its application expanded later to other fields such as software de- velopment and telecommunications. In the case of software development, it was ob- served that 15–25% of all projects failed to complete and that there was great dissatisfaction with the quality, cost, or timeliness of those that did complete. This has spurred the adoption of project management in the conduct of software projects as a way to bring runaway processes under control. Likewise, the increased interest in for- mal project management techniques in telecommunication services can be attributed to several factors. Changes in the regulatory regime have imposed the unbundling of many telecommunication services into their individual constituents, while several new tech- nologies have become available to service providers. This combination of regulatory and technological changes has led to an increase in the number of potential suppliers as well as candidate solutions. The multiplicity of choices at each level of the service hier- archy (infrastructure, network, application, content) has made the interactions among vendors, sponsors, and customers extremely complex, especially when some of the op- erational tasks are outsourced. Finally, competitive pressures are forcing service compa- nies to deliver their products faster, with higher quality and with lower cost. Conducting successful projects in such a dynamic and risky environment requires the discipline that formal project management fosters. The current architecture of telecommunication services is shown in Figure 1.1. An in- frastructure provider is responsible for making transmission bandwidth (fiber cables, un- dersea cables, satellites, etc.) available. A network provider builds, operates, and main- tains the network elements and infrastructure. The service provider buys network services from a network provider and then resells them to end-users, other service providers, and content providers. The service provider can be an Internet service provider (ISP), a provider of disaster recovery or a storage area network (SAN) provider, a call center oper- ator, a web host, and so on. The content provider is responsible for content creation and can consolidate catalogs (e.g., directory services), store voice messages, provide answer- ing services (call centers), or provide digital certificates. Finally, among the functions of the content manager would be managing customer relationship, packaging contents from several content providers, facilitating electronic payments, acting an exchange or a mar- ket place for electronic commerce, storing content, and so on. Clearly, many independent entities have to cooperate to integrate their particular subcomponent in an end-to-end ser- vice offer. Furthermore, the planning and development of infrastructure projects can last several years and could involve up to several thousand persons from many suppliers. Pro- ject management techniques are needed to prevent the fragmentation that may plague large-scale engineering projects and to ensure that [Bergren et al., 2001]: 앫 The activities of the various parties remain coordinated without unnecessary rigidi- ty or bureaucracy. 앫 The project activities remain relevant through controlled of the changes to the tech- nical and quality requirements to track the environment or the customer needs. 2 PROJECTS IN TELECOMMUNICATION SERVICES
- 27. 앫 Experience gained is recorded and transmitted to improve organizational learning, even though techniques of lean management make such learning very difficult. Virtual Network Operators Service providers can be viewed as virtual network operators (VNO) to underline the fact that they have no physical assets and that they buy the connectivity from specialized sup- pliers. In turn, they concentrate on the management of customer relations as well as sup- plier management. Let us consider some examples. 앫 AT&T’s consumer long distance could fit that business model because it does not own physical assets. Its services run over its parent’s national and transoceanic net- INTRODUCTION 3 Content Manager (Retailer, broker, etc.) Service Provider Service Provider End-user Network Provider Content Provider Network Provider Infrastructure Provider Figure 1.1 The current architecture of telecommunication services.
- 28. works as well as the local access networks of the various telephone companies within and outside the United States. Its principal activity is to manage 50 million customer relationships through its customer care systems [Martin, 2005, p. 142]. 앫 Call-back operators are another example of service providers. When the cost of a call from Country A to Country B is higher than the cost of a call in the opposite di- rection, callers from the first country can reduce their bill by asking their correspon- dent to initiate the call. This was turned into a business by having an agency in Country B offering the service for a fee to those that have an account with it [Wheatley, 1999, pp. 411–412]. 앫 In the data area, @Home was an ISP created by cable companies to offer broadband access to the Internet over local cables in exchange of a share of its revenues. The content it distributed was stored in 25 regional data centers connected through a backbone network provided by the long-distance companies. 앫 Vonage and AT&T’s CallVantageSM service offers of telephony over IP networks are services that are offered over the broadband connections of cable companies. In addition, the network provider that offers IP connectivity can be different than the service provider. This allows services such as virtual phone numbers whereby in- coming calls can be routed over IP connections anywhere in the world. Thus, peo- ple can make an international call with the price of a local call. Virtual companies may even restrict themselves to customer management and marketing, leaving to their suppliers all other technical aspects of the service. The quality of the ser- vice in terms of availability or billing accuracy becomes highly dependent on the network operator. New services such as electronic commerce or geolocalization must fit within an environment that already exists. However, such a business model is vulnerable to the sup- pliers’ cooperation and decision not to offer competing services using the physical and network management infrastructure that they are leasing. Contribution of Project Management As discussed above, project management is becoming essential for a more efficient ser- vice delivery process that minimizes the risks of cost overruns or schedule slippages and increases the chances of success. In particular, project management aids in assessing the value of the project implementation and providing proactive guidance on the conduct of the implementation with objective metrics to answer the following questions [Thorp, 1998, pp. 51–52]: 1. Are we doing the right things? 2. Are we doing them the right way? 3. Are we getting them done well? 4. Are we getting the benefits? In other words, project management supplies tools to do the following: 앫 Circumscribe the scope of the project and any changes to that scope. 앫 Define and maintain communication links across organizational and occupational boundaries. 4 PROJECTS IN TELECOMMUNICATION SERVICES
- 29. 앫 Anticipate risks and uncertainties. 앫 Measure progress and the quality of the work delivered. 앫 Acquire knowledge through experience and share it among the project team. 앫 Ensure accountability. THE TWO FACETS OF TELECOMMUNICATION SERVICES A common property of service offers is that they have two facets, depending on whether they are seen from the end-user viewpoint or with an eye on internal operations. The external view of a telecommunications service offer is that it consists of services that are available to subscribers to link them with each other. The nature and the charac- teristics of the services vary according to the customer segment, whether it is for a mis- sion-critical business application, for an enterprise network, or for the mass market. The interval view of telecommunication services concerns the capabilities, processes, and functions that allow the organization to deliver that service. This includes the networking technologies in addition to operations support systems, methods and procedures, applica- tions, and content distribution. Figure 1.2 shows the internal view of the components of telecommunication services. Thus, the design of a telecommunication service includes the networking technologies, the operation support systems (OSS), and the management of procurement, testing, installation, operation, maintenance, and billing of telecommunica- tion services. Accordingly, the scope a project in telecommunication services is to bring these components together from concept to life-cycle management, even though these components are not synchronized in their life. In one area, a technology may still be under development while other technologies in another area may be mature or near retirement. The networking technology component relates to (a) the physical infrastructure in- volved in the end-to-end traffic delivery such as cables and transmission lines, (b) the net- work elements such as switches and routers, (c) software-enabled capabilities such as messaging and call forwarding, and (d) networked applications such as web hosting or THE TWO FACETS OF TELECOMMUNICATION SERVICES 5 Figure 1.2 Elements of a telecommunication service. Networking Technology Operation Support Systems Methods and Procedures Telecommunication Services = + + + Network Operator Content and Applications
- 30. storage networks. The equipment includes multiplexers, cross-connect, routing and switching equipment, power systems, and security systems such as intrusion detection systems. In some cases, such as managed services, customer premise equipment will be included. The networks may vary in complexity, size, the technologies used and their in- teraction with each other, their topology, and so on. Innovations at the product level pro- vide media excitement and stimulate enthusiasm for the diffusion of technology. Howev- er, from a service viewpoint, what counts is the ability to deliver and maintain the quality of the end-to-end service. The operation support systems component relates to the various network element man- agement systems as well as systems used for provisioning, accounting, security, billing, and so on. This component is essential for development, deployment and maintenance of high-quality network-based services using shared facilities, such as for public networks. It should be noted that these systems are less important in the case of private and enterprise networks. The methods and procedures are routines to streamline the many tasks needed for (a) the installation of equipment, (b) the engineering of the network, (c) managing the main- tenance and repair operations, and (d) the customer support functions. It is true that the various service providers share more or less the same technology and have similar support systems; furthermore, standardization is essential to ensure end-to-end connectivity and to reduce the complexity of service management. Nevertheless, the distinctive advantage of any service provider resides in is capacity to attract and retain customers and to support growth to reach profitability. In other words, the more the technology is standardized, the more important is the service delivery process in the market success of telecommunica- tion services providers [Ward, 1998]. Finally, the contents and applications refer to content creation (e.g., customer relations management, disaster recovery, electronic data interchange, etc.) or the packaging or con- solidation of contents from several sources. This content can be news, movies, voice mail, web hosting, weather reports or stock price, voice messaging, taxi services, catalogs, cer- tificate management for electronic commerce, and so on. This area is typically outside the focus of network operators or service providers, even though the availability of content is essential for the success of data telecommunication services. For example, to stimulate the growth of some telecommunication services, such as i-mode of NTT DoCoMo or the older Minitel of France Telecom, the network operator used its direct relationship with the end-user to act as an intermediary for content providers—that is, as a distributor and to collect payments. In that role, the operators added the amount due to the content provider to their monthly bills. With the growth of mass markets for the exchange of dig- ital pictures and music files through peer-to-peer sharing as well as the widespread usage of mobile camera-phones, end-users can now act as content providers, like they were in traditional telephony. The issues related to the management of content generation, particularly when it touches intellectual property rights, will not be considered in this book. CATEGORIES OF PROJECTS IN TELECOMMUNICATION SERVICES Telecommunication services vary according to several factors. These include the nature of the network used (public, private, or virtual private), the target market (consumer, busi- ness, government, military, emergency services, etc.), the nature of the installation (per- 6 PROJECTS IN TELECOMMUNICATION SERVICES
- 31. manent or temporary), or the type of services (voice, entertainment, mission critical appli- cations, etc.). To illustrate the characteristics of telecommunication projects in the area of services, let us consider the following examples 1. Upgrading the capabilities to an existing public network 2. Establishment of specialized business networks 3. Installation and dismantling of temporary networks Upgrades of Public Networks This category of projects relates to the replacement of obsolete technology, the deploy- ment of a new service, and the enrichment of an existing service with new features, appli- cations, or capabilities. The origin of these improvements may be new regulations, capac- ity growth to meet customer’s demands, or the emergence of new technologies. Because these projects affect the general public, the challenge that faces network operators is to minimize disruptions to the existing services—that is, preserving a 24-hour-a-day, 7-day- a-week operation even when an obsolete technology is being replaced. 앫 Digital telephony (switching and transmission) replaced analog equipment transpar- ently. Another example is the replacement of the processor of all the 135 4ESS switches in the AT&T voice network during the 1990s without downtime or service interruption [Golinski and Rutkowski, 1997]. 앫 Examples for capacity expansion include the addition of new area codes or the changing of the numbering schemes to 10 digits in many countries, the migration of existing traffic to different transmission facilities such as a new undersea cable or dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) equipment, the expansion of billing systems, and so on. 앫 Examples related to the introduction of new services include the addition of the toll- free (800) numbers, call forwarding, incoming call number identification, and so on. 앫 Examples on the effects of regulations on new telecommunication services include local number portability—that is, the capability to retain telephone numbers even after changing operators, the capability of locating the origin of an emergency call from a mobile phone, and so on. Some projects may be related to the internal processes of the network such as changing to a more flexible billing system, providing on-line billing, and so on. For example, to retain its customers and increase their satisfaction, a service company may introduce a more granular rating engine to take into account fractions of a minute in the billing (the so- called “less-than-one minute billing”), even though this granularity would cause a direct reduction in revenue. In this case, the hope is that customer retention would offset the loss of revenues over the longer term [Goodpasture, 2002, p. 52]. Investment in public telecommunication falls in the same category of infrastructure de- velopment such as roads, railways, water and electricity and other public services. All of them are prerequisites for economic development and for improving the quality of life. Telecommunication services are also important because they complement other structures for communication such as postal service and travel. Given the three main dimensions of CATEGORIES OF PROJECTS IN TELECOMMUNICATION SERVICES 7
- 32. a project (time, cost and quality or scope), the goals of projects in public networks are typically in the domain of quality of service. The main factors that govern projects in pub- lic networks are [United Nations, 1987]: 앫 Level and distribution of income 앫 Industrial and technological level 앫 Economic growth rates 앫 Demographic structure (population, size, age structure, number of households, pat- terns of urbanization, mobility, etc.) 앫 Regulation 앫 Culture Establishment of Specialized Business Networks Private networks are used by enterprises or government entities for their internal commu- nication. A private network can be also used by a federation of enterprises such as the net- works used that link auto manufacturers with their suppliers. The scope of some of these projects may be restricted to a given building or campus, but may also encompass a feder- ation of enterprises. For example, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT)—established in 1987 by 239 banks in 15 countries—has its own private network to relay the interbank messages related to international fund transfers. The notion of the “tipping of network coalition” due to Professor Eli Noam provides a good way to explain the relation between public and private networks. A telecommunica- tion network is a cost-sharing arrangement among several users to meet their communica- tion needs. Initially, external subsidies sustain the growth of the network until it becomes large enough to attract subscribers willing to join to benefit from the networking effect because the cost per subscriber decreases as their number increases. At a certain network size, however, some potential users will add more cost than their contribution to the value of the networking arrangement, because their specific requirements are not economic to meet (e.g., remote locations, peculiar security arrangements, etc.). When this happens, the network expansion stops and—provided that the technology is ready and the regulations are favorable—those who could not join will band together to form other networking as- sociations [Noam, 1992, pp. 26–42]. This explains why cost is the main consideration in private networks unless they transport mission-critical traffic, in which case quality re- mains the most valuable attribute. Private networks are useful when the industry is organized in a tiered fashion such as the global automotive industry, which is dominated by a small number of integrating firms (General Motors, Ford, DaimlerChrysler, etc.) and a three-tier chain of suppliers as shown in Figure 1.3. The hundreds of suppliers that form the first tier use the products from the second tier, which numbers around 5000. The third tier consists of about 50,000 suppliers. As a consequence, the European automobile manufacturers have established a network called ODETTE for the exchange of information between suppliers and car man- ufacturers. Similarly, the Automotive Network eXchange (ANX® ) is the network of the Automotive Industry Action Group (AAIG) (http://www.aiag.org) to link auto manufac- turers with their suppliers in the United States. The ANX is a virtual network in the sense that each participant can manage their part of the network and that several suppliers participate in building the connectivity. As a 8 PROJECTS IN TELECOMMUNICATION SERVICES
- 33. consequence, successful delivery of the service to the end-user relies on the collaboration of many types of service providers. Their equipment and their methods and procedures must be compatible—for example, procedures for maintenance and trouble-shooting of defects and outages. The infrastructure providers are responsible for managing the physi- cal bandwidth for transmission (fiber cables, undersea cables, satellites, etc.). The various network providers build, operate, and maintain the network elements and infrastructure. To secure the communication, all users are certified and have a digital encryption certifi- cate to protect the exchanges using the Internet Protocol Security IPSEC. Various certifi- cation authorities manage the encryption infrastructure, while an overseer orchestrates the overall functioning. Telcordia Technologies (formerly Bellcore), a subsidiary of SAIC, has that role while Verisign manages the responsibility for the security. The various digi- tal certificates must be interoperable. CATEGORIES OF PROJECTS IN TELECOMMUNICATION SERVICES 9 Figure 1.3 Three-layer organization of the automotive industry. Sub- contractor 1 Sub- contractor 2 3rd tier of supplier (50,000 appx.) 2nd tier of suppliers (3000 appx.) 1st tier of suppliers (100 appx.) Integrators Auto manufacturer A Auto manufacturer B Supplier 1 Supplier 2 Supplier 2 Sub- contractor 5 Sub- contractor 3 Sub- contractor 4 Sub- contractor 5
- 34. Temporary Networks Temporary telecommunication installations consist of several networks for voice, data, or video associated with specific events such as major international conferences, global sporting events (e.g., the World Cup for soccer), or relief operations. The basic constraint in these projects is that the network must be operational at a date that is absolutely fixed. This means that it is possible to change either the scope of the project, the quality of the operation, the cost of the operation, or all of them. In the Athens Olympic Games of 2004, the Tetra (Terrestrial Trunked Radio) network for the security forces (police, coastguard, and emergency services) had to be installed sufficiently in advance to allow for the train- ing of the security forces. To meet that date, Motorola had to assume the risk of rolling out the network before the contract was signed [Hope, 2003]. The size of such networks can be very huge. During the Hajj season (pilgrimage of Muslims to Mecca), the network load reached about 1.3 million telephone calls per day in 2001, with about half of them placed over international lines. For the Olympics Games, the typical call load hovers around 12 million telephone calls. International communica- tions increase by about 20–30%, with most of the increase after the opening ceremony. It is similarly observed that the cellular phone usage usually peaks during the opening cere- mony. Peaks to individual countries depend on gold medal performance and can exceed 100% of the total capacity. For illustration, Table 1.1 contains statistics for the evolution of the logistics needed during successive Summer Olympics between 1988 and 2000 [Verveer, 2001]. The main purpose of temporary networks is to provide access to other networks and to furnish timely information to the participants in the event in question (e.g., weather infor- mation, press conferences, meetings, press information systems, etc.) through a variety of access points (fixed-wire, mobile, radio, TV, satellite, etc.) and to connect them to the outside world. These projects have an absolute end-date that must be met at any cost (in- cluding sacrificing some functionalities). The project tasks cover planning, installation, deployment, operation, and, finally, dis- mantling. Installation of temporary networks includes defining the following: 1. A numbering and addressing plan. 2. A frequency plan for radio, satellite, or wireless communications. 3. A network plan with redundancy through multiple routes, dual homing to avoid sin- gle point of failures, power backups, and so on. 4. Management of operations including customer support through call centers and messaging centers, network care systems to detect troubles, and the integration with 10 PROJECTS IN TELECOMMUNICATION SERVICES Table 1.1 Evolution of the Overall Logistics for the Summer Olympics 1988–2000 [Verveer, 2001] Seoul 1988 Barcelona 1992 Atlanta 1996 Sydney 2000 Athletes: 9,627 9,905 10,630 11,116 Press: 4,930 4,880 5,954 5,300 Radio and TV: 10,360 11,433 13,954 14,292 Ticket sold: 3,306,000 3,812,000 8,384,290 7,000,000 Number of events: 237 257 271 300 Countries broadcasting: 160 193 214 220 Number of sports: 23 25 26 28
- 35. other national networks and international networks (emergency, hospital and police services, broadcast, etc.). This may also involve arrangement with local operators to house the equipment needed for the temporary network at existing offices or re- lay sites. 5. Procedures for accounting, charging and billing. 6. Construction of storage sites, cabling, installation of antennas, and so on. 7. Physical and network security as well as disaster recovery plans. 8. Training of personnel and availability of necessary supplies for maintenance and repair. CHARACTERISTICS OF TELECOMMUNICATION SERVICE PROJECTS From the previous examples, it is seen that telecommunication service projects consist of a portfolio of subprojects characterized by the following: 1. Complexity of the interfaces (internally and externally) 2. International orientation 3. Multidisciplinarity 4. No mass production 5. Diversity of user requirements 6. Relatively long planning stage (even for temporary installations) Complex Interfaces The complexity of telecommunication operations has recently increased because service companies are no longer vertically integrated, have outsourced many functions, and rely on numerous intermediaries in their delivery process. Furthermore, new products or ser- vices must be backward compatible with the legacy systems and the prevailing organiza- tional arrangements. This is true not only for new services in traditional telephony but also for mobile or IP applications, because they have to interwork with the existing fixed- wire networks. To facilitate discussion, we consider two types of interfaces: (a) external interfaces to other entities participating in the service delivery and (b) internal interfaces connecting the processes and the operational systems of the operator. External Interfaces. Figure 1.3 shows the increase in the number interfaces in the cur- rent architecture of telecommunication services. Typically, there is a network provider of record from which the interconnection service is purchased and which assumes all cus- tomer-facing support functions including sales, services, billing, and so on. Cooperation among the network operators can vary from interconnection agreements to allow trans- port and delivery of customer’s traffic, to telehousing of equipment, to a full service agency. In this case, the operators may participate in the pre-sales discussions, in the or- dering and provisioning of the product infrastructure, and in the deployment of the neces- sary network elements and management systems. For example, in the installation of un- dersea cables, teams from several companies and countries collaborate on the specifications, the selection of equipment vendors, and the definition of the network ar- CHARACTERISTICS OF TELECOMMUNICATION SERVICE PROJECTS 11
- 36. chitecture. They also establish the financial and accounting procedures among the various partners and the procedures to be used for the procurement, installation, testing, and com- missioning of terminal equipment. A typical service provider assumes more roles than a reseller. A resale situation is a mar- keting arrangement whereby the reseller acts as the intermediary between the customer and the service provider; that is, it assumes most or all of the customer-facing functions (sales, billing, collection, etc,). One reason for such an arrangement would be to extend customer services to a different linguistic group or to overcome sale force limitation. A service provider, in contrast, fulfills some basic functional needs that the unbundling of telecom- munication services has uncovered by bringing to the surface issues that were once internal to each telecommunications operator. Consider, for illustration, a disaster recovery service. Here, the service provider offers recovery facilities by replicating the customer’s data cen- ters and rents the necessary infrastructure from the network provider. The network provider, in turn, designs a network configuration with preassigned (but inactive) backup ports and access circuits for each customer’s data center. The infrastructure provider may own the access circuits. However, it is the end-customer that designates which circuits will be activated to ensure that mission critical applications are minimally affected by the fail- ure. Activation of the disaster recovery plan is triggered when the customer reports to the service provider a site failure and requests reconfiguration. The disaster recovery service provider, in turn, calls the infrastructure network provider to effect the change. Thus, in a world defined by technology change, unbundling of services, and deregula- tions, in addition to the ambitions to achieve global connectivity as quickly as possible, hybrid service arrangements abound, with parts provided by any different number of sup- pliers using many technologies. Internal Interfaces. Sales of telecommunications service begin with an initial cus- tomer contact or inquiry and conclude with a signed contract and the hand-off to the or- dering and provisioning organizations. This process involves the customer, the sales team, and the capacity management team. The processes and systems used to support ser- vice establishment for public data networks, which are illustrated in Figure 1.4, are very similar to those used in traditional telephony [Rey, 1983, p. 374]. It is possible to group the functions needed for service delivery into six aspects [Ward, 1998, pp. 97–100]: 1. Acquisitions and Sales. This is a function that addresses all the activities associated with the acquisition of new customers. It includes lead generation, prequalification, proposal development, pricing, and contract preparation. 2. Order Entry/Order Handling. This is a function that includes the tasks associated with converting the request for service into a firm order. This includes finalizing the design details including firm order confirmation and order tracking and archiv- ing. 3. Provisioning and Installation. These processes depend on systems for configura- tion and inventory management. The complexities associated with the handling of inventories in a large network that encompasses a variety of equipment are usually underestimated. 4. Network Management and Trouble Management. These are processes that rely on systems that are only accessible for the network operators for fault management 12 PROJECTS IN TELECOMMUNICATION SERVICES
- 38. and performance management, including alarm monitoring and maintenance sys- tems. These systems originate from many vendors, which may be problematic, be- cause they are often vendor- and equipment-specific. This lack of standardization is problematic as vendors merge, drop products, or combine product lines. The inte- gration of these systems for network management becomes incumbent on the net- work operator, which is a costly endeavor. Furthermore, if the end-to-end connec- tion involves several administrative domains, such as on international links, the exchange of trouble reports or tickets and accounting data among network providers and their customers becomes complicated. 5. Accounting and Billing. These activities relate to the collection of the data elements for invoicing the customers. Mediation systems poll the network elements such as switches and pass the records to the billing systems. One important element of billing is the rating engine that applies the business rules associated with a service to compute the amount to be billed from the data in the call records. The computa- tion takes into consideration a complex set of parameters such as the type of traffic (voice, data, text, etc.), the accounting rates set in the contract, any promotions or discounts, and so on. In the case of services spanning several countries, the curren- cy to use is also a factor. If electronic payments are used, the security of payments and the privacy of data must be ensured. 6. Fulfillment. This is another process (not shown in the figure) that is related to any post-sale or post-installation customer activities, such as training, notifications of upgrades, service enhancement, and so on. More on Billing Systems. Billing systems are crucial for the long-term survival of the network operator not only by recovering the cost of offering the service but also for un- covering new business opportunities. Customer relationship management (CRM) sys- tems, for example, rely to a large extent on billing records to understand the profile of the existing users and how to tailor the services to better fit their needs or to attract new users. Unfortunately, many business managers underestimate the volume and the complexity of the data going through these systems, especially given the plethora of existing and new service offers that technology changes and changing market arrangements impose on a network provider that would like to survive in a competitive environment. In a typical communication, subscribers are located on different networks, and thus multiple operators participate in handling the call end-to-end. Interconnect billing sys- tems keep track of the traffic flowing between two different network operators so that the amount that they have to pay each other is consolidated in a net sum that is paid by a sin- gle bill. In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) mandates that revenues from long-distance communications be shared among all the networks that have carried the traffic as an exchange for the use of their facilities used to provide the call. Both the access billing process itself and the tools for tracking and calculating the bills are known as the carrier access billing system (CABS). Finally, revenue assurance software helps the network operators sift though billing records to detect the source of revenue loss (or leakage) from inaccurate or incomplete records due to system malfunction, operator’s errors (particularly due to subscriber churn), incorrect rating, hacking, fraud, and so on. This is important because the revenue losses can vary from to 2% to 5% and can reach as much as 15%. Losses are particularly 14 PROJECTS IN TELECOMMUNICATION SERVICES
- 39. high when new services are offered or when providers consolidate their billing systems following a merger. International Orientation In theory, manufacturers have the option of focusing on specific markets without having global ambitions. This is not possible in the case of communication services because they do not stop at geographical or political boundaries. Even if a telecommunications compa- ny decides to restrict itself to a region, be it a remote or a rural area, it would still have to receive traffic from, and send it to, the rest of the world. The combination of privatization and deregulation have added international flavors to investment decisions in telecommu- nication services, particularly because business globalization has shown the importance for “global carriers”—that is, carriers active in different regions of the world to serve the telecommunications needs of multinational corporations. At the present time, the service lead-time (i.e., the waiting period before the service is available) is not uniform through- out and depends on many factors. Some of these factors are the status of the local net- work, the access to the network including the way to negotiate with the venues owners for access, and installation of the necessary equipment and cabling. Another problem is that different operators have different policies for trouble reports and may use different for- mats for trouble tickets. Therefore, it is not possible to have a uniform policy for trouble detection and resolution in a worldwide enterprise network. A third inconvenience is the operation of help desks because of variations in holidays, vacations, time zones, work weeks, languages, worker’s rights, and so on. For a service provider, some of the challenges facing a seamless global operation are as follows: 1. The regulatory procedures vary from country to country with respect to licensing requirements, spectrum-management, environment impact, rules on the location of antennas or cell towers, the enforcement of service level agreements, the homolo- gation of equipment or individual cards, and so on. 2. Variation in the performance obligations, particularly for voice communications such as dial tone delay, connection to emergency services, communications avail- able to the deaf, and so on. 3. Differences in legal systems concerning rights and obligations of content owner- ship, responsibility of the carrier with respect to the content, right to privacy, en- cryption, and so on. 4. Account settlement and payment with many different currencies pose challenges for budgeting purposes due to the fluctuations in the exchange rate as well as changes in taxation laws. The global carriers will identify cost components per country for taxation purposes and devise ways to split the overall bills into the cor- rect local currency for each country. This is important if the carrier offer network- wide consolidated discount schemes. Multidisciplinarity Implementations of telecommunication services involve several engineering disciplines (construction, physical design, mechanical, thermal, electrical, computer science, etc.) in CHARACTERISTICS OF TELECOMMUNICATION SERVICE PROJECTS 15
- 40. addition to statisticians, marketing and legal professionals, and so on. Many of these as- pects are intertwined. For example, the construction of buildings and the installation of antennas must be fire- and earthquake-resistant. Environmental regulations control the placement of transmission towers to protect the population from the radiation while the installation of satellite antennas must take into account resistance to wind. Risk analysis and disaster recovery rely on a combination of engineering, financial, and legal expertise. The operation and maintenance of the network require administrative skills for account- ing, logistics, human resource management, and so on. An interesting example happened with the TAT-8, the first fiber-optic transatlantic cable. When the glow from the cable at- tracted sharks attacks, the failure rate increased unexpectedly. To resolve the problem, the opinion of marine biologists was solicited to design a suitable shield to prevent these at- tacks. No Mass Production Most telecommunication services take place in a specific environment within specific procedures and technical constraints. As a consequence, no two networks are alike be- cause they have to fit within the environment that is defined by the legacy of previous technical and business decisions, legal rulings, and the operator’s history. Thus, each pro- ject has a different context (politically and technologically), user population, and so on, even if the technology is well understood such as in the case of the plain old telephone service (POTS), private line, or traditional data services (e.g., frame relay). Variations in telecommunication projects depend on several factors such as: 앫 The type of network used (public, private, virtual private, etc.) 앫 Target market (consumers, business, government, military, service resellers, etc.) 앫 Nature of the installation (permanent or temporary) 앫 Types of service (voice, highly reliable data, best effort data, integrated traffic) 앫 The geography of the areas of the project; this is especially important in mobile networks where the topography of the environment affects the propagation of the signals 앫 Legal framework One consequence of this characteristic is that the boundary between the “end of the pro- ject” and the beginning of production and life-cycle management is less defined than in the case of equipment design and production, especially for in-house projects. In such a case, the project development team may be called for some field support in case of prob- lems, particularly in the case of testing the repair (“patch” testing). Diverse Users Success of the service project depends on the level of customer satisfaction with what was delivered and how it was delivered. Yet users are not homogeneous but fall in dif- ferent subgroups, each with different membership needs. In an enterprise, the success of a service depends on whether it has helped the functional organizations in improving their functions. In a temporary project for a conference or a sports event, the needs of 16 PROJECTS IN TELECOMMUNICATION SERVICES
- 41. the participants are different from those of the media organizations. In mission-critical applications the reliability of the network and its availability cannot be compromised. However, there are many other tolerant applications where “best effort” is good enough. A Relatively Long Planning Stage Planning for telecommunication services usually takes a long time. Even temporary pro- jects (e.g., disaster recovery contingencies) require a lot of planning and preparation (5 years in the case of the Olympics, for example). The planning includes aspects related to the network and the equipment, the organizational arrangement, the regulation, train- ing of the personnel, whether permanent or temporary, and so on. The logistics of equipment removal is important, not only for temporary installations where typically more than 90% of the installed equipment has to be removed, but also in more perma- nent installations due to more stringent environmental laws that require recycling or the treatment of pollutants. The industry of telecommunication services does not experience short turnaround times such as those encountered in consumer electronics, desktop software, or even net- work equipment: While the industry is dynamic, service innovations happen at a much slower rate [Ward, 1998, p. 38]. Evolution must be steady according to a thoroughly thought-out plan, even though the regulatory changes, globalization, and new technolo- gies are bringing open significant opportunities. This fundamental point was missed dur- ing the dot com bubble. Finally, the long gestation of telecommunication services makes them true reflections of the society itself in terms of fundamental assumptions and power structure: whether services are decided or financed after consultation with the public, by top-down fiat or through the market mechanism of supply and demand. Summary of Distinctions Between the Development of Telecommunication Services and Equipment. The production and delivery of telecommunication service usually comprises many subprojects that evolve at different speeds, using a wide variety of technologies and requiring many distinctive skills. These challenges make telecommu- nication projects very rewarding because of the many possibilities of cross-education and the lack of monotony. Table 1.2 summarizes the distinctions between development pro- jects in telecommunication services and those in product design and manufacturing or software development projects. These distinctions are important to ponder and keep in mind because they guide the way resources and skills are aligned during the lifetimes of projects. It is recommended that these differences be considered in the conception, design and implementation of telecommunication services. SUMMARY Telecommunication service projects are complex endeavors that exhibit two facets, de- pending on the vantage point. With deregulation, the number of interfaces and linkages as well as the pressure to achieve faster rate of returns have increased the complexity of service development. We drew on some examples to illustrate how the constraints on schedule, cost, and quality vary with the nature of the service. In particular, the main SUMMARY 17
- 42. constraint on public services relates to quality; in enterprise environments, cost is the major concern while timeliness is ahead of all other considerations for temporary instal- lations. We have identified six characteristics that distinguish the development of telecommunication services from the corresponding activities in equipment manufactur- ing. The rest of the book will demonstrate how this dichotomy affects project imple- mentation. 18 PROJECTS IN TELECOMMUNICATION SERVICES Table 1.2 Dichotomy of Telecommunication Projects in Equipment Manufacturing and in Service Delivery Telecommunication Telecommunication Item Equipment Manufacturer Service Provider Stakeholders in the Manufacturing, marketing, Administrative, legal, construction, multifunctional team research and development, quality assurance, marketing, environmental environmental Mass production Yes No Procurement Individual components or Equipment, bandwidth, or other subsystems telecom services Customer Distributors and end-users Depends on the business model (customer or business) Clear boundary between Yes No, particularly for in-house project termination development and life-cycle management International dimension Optional—Mostly for marketing, Marketing, regulation, regulatory aspects and interconnectivity, account compatibility through settlement, payment, troubles standards isolation and repair, vendor support, etc. Quality criteria Cost, size or footprint, power Cost, availability, reliability, consumption, reliability, ease billing accuracy, customer of repair, etc. support, end-to-end quality, etc.
- 43. Telecommunication projects build on a technical infrastructure to satisfy business and so- cial objectives. In this chapter, we take advantage of studies on the management of inno- vation to gain insight into the nature of telecommunication projects. In particular, we ex- plain the role that internal and external standards play in the development of telecommunication services. The methodology presented here will combine two perspec- tives, the technological and the marketing and social, to draw a more comprehensive view of the context in which projects are executed. THE TWO DIMENSIONS OF TELECOMMUNICATION PROJECTS The Technological Dimension There are five main stages of a technology life cycle: innovation, improvement, maturity, substitution, and obsolescence [Betz, 1993; Khalil, 2000]. These stages are shown in Fig- ure 2.1, with the ordinate measuring the market presence (e.g., revenues, market share, etc.). An emerging technology stimulates the consolidation of new functional areas and the accumulation of new types of knowledge through research and field experience. As the properties of this emerging technology become better understood, new designs ameliorate its performance and increase the efficiency of the production processes. If the technology moves to the main stream, its market share expands until its performance saturates. At this point, any substantial performance improvement will require a switch to a new tech- Managing Projects in Telecommunication Services. By Mostafa Hashem Sherif 19 Copyright © 2006 The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. 2 STANDARDS AND INNOVATION IN TELECOMMUNICATION SERVICES
- 44. nology as shown in Figure 2.2. It is sometimes possible to predict these limits using scien- tific knowledge, such as in the case of Moore’s law in integrated circuit design or the channel capacity in information transmission. Some examples of past and current technol- ogy transitions in telecommunications transitions include: 앫 Move from manual switching, to automatic switching, which allowed direct dialing of telephone numbers 앫 Move from analog to digital in transmission and switching equipment, which al- lowed improvements in the voice quality suppressing noisy backgrounds 앫 Move from circuit-switched networks to packet-switched networks 앫 Move from coaxial cables to fiber-optic cables, etc. We give now two examples showing the technology S-curve (but do not illustrate the technology transition shown in Figure 2.2). The first example is that of dynamic routing in circuit-switched networks, which was introduced in telephone networks to improve the efficiency of network usage and enhance robustness to failures [Ash and Chemouil, 2004]. The genesis of the work started in 1975 to 1980 by adapting the techniques of learning automata to routing problems for telephone. Figure 2.3 shows the diffusion of this technique from 1984 until 2000 in various telephone networks. The second example, illustrated in Figure 2.4, is the subscriber growth of i-mode services in Japan from Febru- ary 1999 until November 2004. The sequence of events in which technological change affect telecommunication ser- vices follow the following sequence: 1. A new technology is embodied in the design of network elements and/or network element management systems. 20 STANDARDS AND INNOVATION IN TELECOMMUNICATION SERVICES Figure 2.1 Technology life cycle. Market Volume for the technology Emergence Improvement Maturity Substitution Obsolescence
- 45. 2. Depending on the degree of novelty, the structure of the development process, in- cluding the production system, is modified. 3. The skills are transferred to the workforce of the equipment manufacturer and the telecommunication operations (engineers, technicians, managers, support personnel). 4. The supply chain may have to be modified (vendors selection process, acceptance test procedures, intervals, etc.). 5. Additional capital expenditure have to be approved (new facilities, test and diagno- sis equipment, etc.). 6. The knowledge and experience is diffused toward the general public so that new applications are discovered and developed. THE TWO DIMENSIONS OF TELECOMMUNICATION PROJECTS 21 Figure 2.2 S-curves for two successive technologies. Time Performance Technology B Technology A Technology Transition Figure 2.3 Growth of dynamic routing implementations in circuit-switched networks. 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 Year of Introduction Number Started Number Ended In Existence
- 46. In all these steps, successful management of the technological innovation depends on the mobilization of a network of people with technical and managerial skills. Members of this network include research and development specialists, production engineers, managers capable of facing uncertainties (entrepreneurs), and financiers. Because most of the know-how resides in the heads of key people, the transfer of knowledge depends on the movement of these key people and a systematic program for training at all levels. Howev- er, in the early phases, the networks are susceptible to single points of failures if a key participant with essential expertise leaves the project. The Marketing and Social Dimension C. M. Christensen introduced the concept of a value network as the set of attributes used to rank products, services, or technologies and determine their cost structures [Christensen, 1997, p. 32, 39–41]. This value network defines the context within which a company eval- uates the environment that surrounds it, responds to opportunities and threats, and strives for profit. Significant changes in the attributes or their rankings that alter the industrial structure perturb that understanding by introducing discontinuities in the value chain. Factors that can cause a discontinuity include new legislation, emerging standards, evolu- tion of the customer’s profiles, and so on; such a discontinuity opens opportunities to new entrants. For example, how to evaluate the subjective quality of speech communication de- pends on whether mobility is important to the user; in cases where it is important, then some degradation can be accepted [Johannesson, 1997]. Innovations that change the rank order are called disruptive while those that preserve it are called sustaining [Christensen, 1997, p. 39]. The marketing impact of a change in the value network can effect one or several of the following aspects [Abernathy and Clark, 1985]: 1. Customer groups and markets 2. Customer applications 3. Channels of distribution and service delivery 22 STANDARDS AND INNOVATION IN TELECOMMUNICATION SERVICES 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 Days from service start (2/22/99) Number of subscribers in millions Figure 2.4 Subscriber growth for i-mode in Japan (Source: http://www.nttdocomo.com/company- info/subscriber.html).
- 47. 4. Customer knowledge 5. Modes of communication with customers Classification of Innovations Depending on the degree of changes they introduce in the technology or in the existing value network, innovations can be grouped into four categories as shown in Figure 2.5: incremental, architectural, platform, and radical [Abernathy and Clark, 1985, Betz, 1993, p. 394; Sherif, 2003a, 2003b]. Incremental (or process or modular) innovations build upon well-known technologi- cal capabilities to enhance an existing technology through improved performance, en- hanced security, better quality, and reduced cost, within the established value network. The purpose of the innovation is to enhance the competitive position through economies of scale to lower cost and improve productivity through automation. The objective of re- duction in production and distribution costs requires extensive data collected from real experience. It is estimated that half of the economic benefit of a new technology comes from process improvements after the technology has been commercially established [Christensen, 1997, p. 56, note 3]. This is why incremental innovations are typically process innovations that tend to reinforce the existing industrial order because they are more readily integrated within the firm’s strategy from both the technological and finan- cial viewpoints. This contrasts with other types of innovations that could alter the order and offer opportunities to new entrants [Betz, 1993, p. 369]. For example, the high-level data link protocol (HDLC) is an incremental innovation through the standardization of the synchronous data link control (SDLC) protocol that IBM had developed for its System Network Architecture (SNA). THE TWO DIMENSIONS OF TELECOMMUNICATION PROJECTS 23 Figure 2.5 Classification of innovation in terms of the value chain and the technological competen- cies. Platform Innovation Incremental Innovation Architectural Innovation Radical Innovation New Technology Existing Technology New Value Chain Existing Value Chain Value Chain Discontinuity Technological Discontinuity Sustaining Innovation Disruptive Innovation
- 48. Architectural innovations (sometimes called systems innovations) provide new func- tional capabilities by redefining the rearrangements of existing technology to satisfy un- met needs (simplicity, cost, reliability, efficiency, convenience, etc.) [Betz, 1993, p. 21]. Architectural innovations result from a market pull: new uses of an existing technology. This is an articulation of latent patterns of demands that can be satisfied by blending in- cremental technical improvements from several previously separate fields of technology to create a new product or service. This category of innovation tends to modify the supply chain and to reorganize the market segments, ultimately forming a new value network [Christensen, 1997, pp. 171–176]. An example of architectural innovation is the automo- bile that put together carriage technology, with bicycle technology and the new gasoline engine. The interplay between architectural and incremental innovations can be seen using the following example. The Standardized General Markup Language (SGML) was an incre- mental innovation from ISO starting with GML (Generalized Markup Language), a lan- guage that IBM had developed to manage electronic documents. The HyperText Markup Language (HTML) and the Extensible Markup Language (XML) descend from SGML. HTML is an architectural innovation based on SGML because its field of application is document retrieval over the Internet, which is in a different value chain than the original application of data base management. Finally, XML is an incremental innovation of HTML. This is summarized in Figure 2.6 [Egyedi and Loeffen, 2001]. Figure 2.7 illustrates the succession of innovation types from GML to XML using the 2 × 2 matrix of innovations. Platform innovations correspond to a quantum leap in performance without changes to an existing value chain [Betz, 1993, pp. 309–322; Christensen, 1997, pp. 62–63]. This technology transition demands the integration of sophisticated resources and the exploita- tion of expertise gained usually beyond the reach of small- or medium-sized companies [Christensen, 1997, p. 74, no. 3]. New platforms change the technical competitive posi- tions and weaken small firms by changing the technical characteristics on which competi- tion is pursued. Because a technology push is the main characteristic of platform innova- tions, technological considerations dictate business strategies to manage the diffusion growth including licensing, training, and so on. Radical innovations provide a totally new set of functional capabilities that are dis- continuous with the existing technological capabilities or value networks. Kuhn [1970] showed that the advancement in science is characterized by long periods of regular de- velopments punctuated by periods of revolutions. Likewise, radical innovations are spaced in time and, when successful, lead to a dominant design that is improved con- tinuously. 24 STANDARDS AND INNOVATION IN TELECOMMUNICATION SERVICES GML (IBM/1969) SGML (ISO/1979-1986) HTML (IETF/ 1995) XML (W3C/1996-1998) Compatible succession Incompatible succession SGML+ (ISO) Figure 2.6 Evolution of GML to SGML, HTML, and XML.
- 49. Radical innovations face four types of uncertainties: technical uncertainty, resource uncertainty, organizational uncertainty and market uncertainty. Technical uncertainty arises from two factors: (1) Many of the technical characteristics of the innovation are not well understood, and (2) an even better technology may become available and displace the technology under development. In telecommunications, this is how optical transmis- sion displaced the emerging waveguide technology.* Resource uncertainties relate to the unknowns regarding the cost of development and implementation as well as of maintain- ing the collaborative network of technical, managerial, and marketing experts. Organiza- tional uncertainties are due to the tension from simultaneous discontinuities in the tech- nology and in the value network. Market acceptance is another unknown, because the more radical the technical innovation, the less likely that existing customers will be able to guide its development: Market research methodologies typically focus on existing ap- plications [Betz, 1993, p. 165; Christensen, 1997]. For this type of invention, the advice by W. E. Deming is very appropriate: “New products and new types of service are gener- ated, not by asking customers, but by knowledge, imagination, innovation, risk, trial and error on the part of the producer, backed by enough capital to develop the product or ser- vice and to stay in business during the lean months of introduction” [Deming, 1986, p. 182]. Innovations and the Technology Life Cycle Consider Figure 2.8, which relates the various innovation types to the technology life cy- cle and market acceptance. Radical innovations are encountered first in proof of concept implementations. Once the innovation proves itself, successive platform and incremental innovations enhance the performance and allow the firm to gain market share. Architec- tural innovation are common when the technology has matured in pursuit of new markets. New product or service concepts based on disruptive innovations, whether radical or ar- chitectural, are difficult to envision. They require flexibility to unlearn habits and prac- tices, carry some experimentation, and exhibit keen awareness of the environment in terms of competitors, suppliers, regulations, fashions and fads, and so on. THE TWO DIMENSIONS OF TELECOMMUNICATION PROJECTS 25 Platform Innovation Radical Innovation Incremental Innovation Architectural Innovation SGML GML XML HTML Figure 2.7 Relation of incremental and architectural innovations in the case of GML, SGML, HTML, and XML. *I am grateful to my colleague Thomas Hellstern for suggesting this example.
- 50. When the performance improvement levels off, process (incremental) innovations increase the efficiency of operations or enhance some features to increase revenues. Incremental innovations target existing users; typical customers’ surveys provide useful guidance of their needs. Thus, incremental innovations follow a well-defined path from research to development, manufacturing, and deployment. During each step, the responsibilities are well-defined and the execution follows well-honed procedures. Thus, these innovations depend on the preservation, reproduction, and maintenance of past data, learning from past experience and specialized knowledge, skills, and capabil- ities. INNOVATION IN TELECOMMUNICATION SERVICES Services offered on public telecommunication networks are available to subscribers shar- ing a common infrastructure within the province of a network operator. To consider inno- vations in public telecommunication services, the whole system has to be partitioned into relatively independent modules that can be analyzed more or less independently. Radical innovations introduce new networking technologies that require new OSSs and new M&Ps and are often associated with new user applications. The need for new OSSs arises because a new set of parameters track the operation of the new network. Therefore, to monitor the performance, to detect troubles and localize faults, and to maintain invento- ries, new tracking systems need to be developed. Platform innovations consist of improved networking technologies, improved OSSs, and improved applications. Incremental innovations build on mature network technolo- gies with enhancements to the M&Ps and/or the applications. Finally, architectural inno- vations depend on sustaining networking technologies, improved OSSs, and new applica- tions. Figure 2.9 summarizes the various categories of innovations in public 26 STANDARDS AND INNOVATION IN TELECOMMUNICATION SERVICES Profit Market share increase Proof of concept Platform innovation Radical innovations Time Performance of the Technology Process (incremental) and architectural innovations Figure 2.8 Relation of the types of innovations to the technology life cycle.
- 51. telecommunication services [Sherif, 2003a]. The changes in OSS for incremental innova- tions are not shown because they are on a much smaller scale than for all other types of innovations. Incremental Innovation Incremental innovations revolve around the dominant design to improve operational per- formance, reduce cost, and increase efficiency. Because the technical and operational properties of the service are well understood, these innovations depend on the empirical experience gained from extensive use of mature technologies and within the prevailing order. From a service viewpoint, the telephone answering machine is one such an innova- tion [Vercoulen and Van Wegberg, 1999]; without affecting the structure of the public telephone network, it increased the operators’ revenues because callers left their messages to the absent party rather than hanging up, thereby giving the operators the opportunity of recuperating the cost of the call attempts. For mobile operators, games are incremental in- novative services that use the same infrastructure to increase connect time. Within the core network, incremental innovations are improvements to achieve higher volumes and attain economies of scale. This can be realized, for example, with (a) increases in trans- mission or switching capacities by going to higher speeds or by using larger switches or (b) increases in process capacity to raise productivity through automation, relocation to areas of low labor cost, or outsourcing of jobs. As mentioned earlier, the main organizational characteristic of incremental innova- tions is that they take place in a stable environment, where it is relatively easy to identify improvements with methodical planning. Most stakeholders have fewer incentives to dis- rupt the value chain, so these innovations tend to support the established order or domi- nant design configuration. Kuhn’s description of the way “normal science” operates gives us some insight on the limits put on incremental innovations: They should be consistent THE TWO DIMENSIONS OF TELECOMMUNICATION PROJECTS 27 Platform Innovation Incremental Innovation Architectural Innovation Radical Innovation New Technology Existing Technology New Value Chain Existing Value Chain Value Chain Discontinuity Technological Discontinuity Sustaining Innovation Disruptive Innovation Matured networking technologies + improved M&Ps + new applications Sustaining networking technologies + improved OSSs + new applications Figure 2.9 Innovations types in telecommunications services.
- 52. with the established design [Kuhn, 1970, p. 39]; that is, they should not rock the boat. By optimizing the operation, however, they increase the rigidity of processes and products, which decreases the overall ability to cope with changing markets or technical require- ments. Also, such productive and efficient operation is less robust to changes in regula- tions or customer tastes, breakdown in automatic processes, or disruptions in the out- sourced functions. Architectural Innovation Many telecommunications services are architecture innovations. The reverse charging (800) service changed the way telephone calls are paid for—that is, by the called party in- stead of the calling party. Bluetooth (and the IEEE 802.x standards) is a marriage of local area networks (LAN) and wireless communications [Keil, 2002]. Bluetooth is a wireless technology that operates in the unlicensed part of the radio spectrum reserved for industri- al scientific medicine (ISM) band at 2.45 GHz to connect mobile handsets with computer terminals. It relies on expertise in radio chip integration in addition to radio transmission, antenna design, and protocol engineering to communicate with portable computers and personal digital assistants. The international call-back service was an architectural innovation to allow cheaper overseas phone calls. Similarly, the Simbox innovation exploits the price differential be- tween calls made from fixed phones to mobile phones and those among mobile terminals. A box of SIM (Subscriber identification module) cards is placed on the premises of an en- terprise so that calls from fixed phones to mobile phones are intercepted and rerouted over the mobile network using one of the available SIM cards. Another example of architectural innovation is the i-mode service whose “father,” Kei- ichi Enoki, admitted that it was made by combining existing technologies [Nakamoto, 2001]. This service concept provides wireless access through mobile telephone handsets to information servers with the public network operator acting as an intermediary to guar- antee both the merchant and the buyer and to collect payments on the merchant’s behalf. In other words, this is a new embodiment of videotext services that the minitel had of- fered in the 1980s with wireline access. As shown in Figure 2.10, the videotext technolo- 28 STANDARDS AND INNOVATION IN TELECOMMUNICATION SERVICES Platform Innovation Incremental Innovation Architectural Innovation Radical Innovation Packet switching Wireless telephony Consumer electronics Web applications i-mode (and videotext) Figure 2.10 Videotext (I-mode/minitel) as architectural innovations for telecommunications services.
- 53. gy is based on a combination of display technology, computer telecommunications, and telephony. Figure 2.11 illustrates how home systems (domotics) combine the technologies of wireless local area networks with appliance engineering and consumer electronics to add new functionalities to existing applications. From a service viewpoint, camera phones are also an example of architectural inno- vation that add mobile telephony and handset ergonomics to the technology mix of dig- ital photography such as image processing, miniaturized optics, and digital storage. By doing so, they changed the supply chains for handsets as well as for digital cameras and created security issues for corporations and institutions. Bundling Wi-Fi services with cellular telephony is another architectural innovation. Wi-Fi technology started to appear in airports, hotels, and cafés as web-connected hotspots to provide wideband access as an alternative to fixed connections using DSL (digital subscriber line) systems or cable modems. Similarly, location-based services are combinations of mobile telecommunications with location technologies. Finally, web-enabled commerce is based on numerous architectural innovations. In all these services, there is a change in the value chain. Location-based services, for example, can enhance business opportuni- ties but raise moral and legal questions on privacy and security: Tracking a user’s movements provides an indication of their absence from their residences. Clearly, market pull is the main characteristic of architectural innovations. Their scope is to find new combinations of existing building blocks (e.g., technology, mar- keting channels, processes, etc.) to expand the market by satisfying unarticulated needs that are not met by existing services. This is why decentralization, deregulation, and the opening up of markets stimulate mostly architectural innovations. When the number of potential players increases, improvements can extend to areas that were not even considered because of limited resources (time, money, personnel, etc.). When quick returns are expected, however, the entrepreneurial efforts will concentrate on ser- vice innovations that combine existing technologies rather than on breakthrough activi- ties. Because architecture innovations are improvements based on the existing dominant design (i.e., no breakthroughs in technologies), it is important to correctly identify which innovations are architectural and which are incremental extensions of the existing design, INNOVATION IN TELECOMMUNICATION SERVICES 29 Platform Innovation Incremental Innovation Architectural Innovation Radical Innovation Local area networks Appliances engineer- ing Consumer electronics Web applications Domotics/Home networks Figure 2.11 Domotics/Home networks as an architectural innovation.
- 54. to direct technical contributions in the right direction: whether to push the performance limits or to think outside the boundaries of the existing framework. Platform Innovation Platform innovations improve the performance of the telecommunication service without disturbing the industry structure. These are complex programs that require large capital investments to upgrade the existing infrastructure. Because of this, they weaken the rela- tive positions of small firms due to the scarcity of financing as well as technical and man- agerial talent. The introduction of digital transmission in the 1970s was a platform inno- vation. According to the classification scheme in Figure 2.9, frame relay and the asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) are platform innovations of packet switching along the “connection-oriented” paradigm. Gigabit Ethernet can be viewed as either a platform innovation (from a local area network viewpoint) or an architectural innovation (from a wide area network viewpoint). Radical Innovation According to Kuhn [1970, p. 92], “a scientific revolution is a noncummulative develop- mental episode in which an older paradigm is replaced in whole or in part by an incompat- ible new one.” If we consider that paradigms of telecommunication services are defined by both the technology and the market context through value chains, we can appreciate that radical innovations are infrequent because they change the way telecommunications prob- lems are understood and resolved. The introduction of modems in the late 1950s was a rad- ical innovation because it allowed the transmission of digital data among computers over the analog telephone networks. Another radical innovation is packet switching, which branched into two approaches. The “connection-oriented” approach continued along the lines used in telephony so as to maintain the overall call quality. The “connection-less” ap- proach of the IP protocol, however, requires a major overhaul of the OSSs, new rules for traffic management, and retraining of human resources. This is why government interven- tion is often an important facilitator for radical innovations in telecommunications. Once a radical innovation becomes the dominant design, continuous improvements in the form of platform and incremental innovations move the technology on its S-curve tra- jectory. However, architectural innovations can combine it with another value network, making it a potentially disruptive technology for another industry [Christensen, 1997, p. 41]. Interaction of Innovations in Equipment and Services End-to-end service offers in telecommunications rely on the smooth integration of many components. This is why the classification scheme illustrated in Figure 2.9 considers process and business aspects in addition to technology. One implication is that, because the evolution of systems, organizations, and technologies are rarely synchronized, inno- vations in terminals, network equipment, and services are not necessarily of the same type, even when they appear as a single bundle to the end-user. Earlier (section entitled “Incremental Innovation”) we used the telephone answering machine as an example of incremental service innovation. From a terminal viewpoint, however, this innovation is architectural, because the terminal is a combined telephone re- ceiver and a tape recorder. 30 STANDARDS AND INNOVATION IN TELECOMMUNICATION SERVICES
- 55. Other documents randomly have different content
- 56. dense oak-trees make a mid-day gloom, you walk amid the unknown, undistinguishable dead. Which was father and which mother, where are lover and stricken sweetheart, whether this is the dust of laughing babe or crooning grandam, you will never know: no foot-stones, no head-stones; sometimes a few rough rails laid around, as you would make a little pen for swine. In places, however, one sees a picket-fence put up, or a sort of shed built over. A MOUNTAINEER DAME. Traditions and folk-lore among them are evanescent, and vary widely in different localities. It appears that in part they are sprung from the early hunters who came into the mountains when game was abundant, sport unfailing, living cheap. Among them now are still- hunters, who know the haunts of bear and deer, needing no dogs. They even now prefer wild meat—even "'possum" and "'coon" and ground-hog—to any other. In Bell County I spent the day in the house of a woman eighty years old, who was a lingering representative of a nearly extinct type. She had never been out of the neighborhood of her birth, knew the mountains like a garden, had whipped men in single-handed encounter, brought down many a [262]
- 57. deer and wild turkey with her own rifle, and now, infirm, had but to sit in her cabin door and send her trained dogs into the depths of the forests to discover the wished-for game. A fiercer woman I never looked on. III Our course now lay direct towards Cumberland Gap, some twenty miles southward. Our road ran along the bank of the Cumberland River to the ford, the immemorial crossing-place of early travel—and a beautiful spot—thence to Pineville, situated in that narrow opening in Pine Mountain where the river cuts it, and thence through the valley of Yellow Creek to the wonderful pass. The scenery in this region is one succession of densely wooded mountains, blue-tinted air, small cultivated tracts in the fertile valleys, and lovely watercourses. Along the first part of our route the river slips crystal-clear over its rocky bed, and beneath the lone green pendent branches of the trees that crowd the banks. At the famous ford it was only two or three feet deep at the time of our crossing. This is a historic point. Here was one of the oldest settlements in the country; here the Federal army destroyed the houses and fences during the Civil War; and here Zollikoffer came to protect the Kentucky gate that opens into East Tennessee. At Pineville, just beyond, we did not remain long. For some reasons not clearly understood by travellers, a dead- line had been drawn through the midst of the town, and not knowing on which side we were entitled to stand, we hastened on to a place where we might occupy neutral ground. The situation is strikingly picturesque: the mountain looks as if cleft sheer and fallen apart, the peaks on each side rising almost perpendicularly, with massive overhanging crests wooded to the summits, but showing gray rifts of the inexhaustible limestone. The river when lowest is here at an elevation of nine hundred and sixty [263] [264]
- 58. feet, and the peaks leap to the height of twenty-two hundred. Here in the future will most probably pass a railroad, and be a populous town, for here is the only opening through Pine Mountain from "the brakes" of Sandy to the Tennessee line, and tributary to the watercourses that centre here are some five hundred thousand acres of timber land. The ride from Pineville to the Gap, fourteen miles southward, is most beautiful. Yellow Creek becomes in local pronunciation "Yaller Crick." One cannot be long in eastern Kentucky without being struck by the number and character of the names given to the watercourses, which were the natural avenues of migratory travel. Few of the mountains have names. What a history is shut up in these names! Cutshin Creek, where some pioneer, they say, damaged those useful members; but more probably where grows a low greenbrier which cuts the shins and riddles the pantaloons. These pioneers had humor. They named one creek "Troublesome," for reasons apparent to him who goes there; another, "No Worse Creek," on equally good grounds; another, "Defeated Creek;" and a great many, "Lost Creek." In one part of the country it is possible for one to enter "Hell fur Sartain," and get out at "Kingdom Come." Near by are "Upper Devil" and "Lower Devil." One day we went to a mountain meeting which was held in "a school-house and church-house" on "Stinking Creek." One might suppose they would have worshipped in a more fragrant locality; but the stream is very beautiful, and not malodorous. It received its name from its former canebrakes and deer licks, which made game abundant. Great numbers were killed for choice bits of venison and hides. Then there are "Ten-mile Creek" and "Sixteen- mile Creek," meaning to clinch the distance by name; and what is philologically interesting, one finds numerous "Trace Forks," originally "Trail Forks." [265] [266]
- 59. OLD CORN-MILL AT PINEVILLE. Bell County and the Yellow Creek Valley serve to illustrate the incalculable mineral and timber resources of eastern Kentucky. Our road at times cut through forests of magnificent timbers—oak (black and white), walnut (black and white), poplar, maple, and chestnut, beech, lynn, gum, dogwood, and elm. Here are some of the finest coal-fields in the world, the one on Clear Creek being fourteen feet thick. Here are pure cannel-coals and coking-coals. At no other point in the Mississippi Valley are iron ores suitable for steel-making purposes so close to fuel so cheap. With an eastern coal-field of 10,000 square miles, with an area equally large covered with a virgin growth of the finest economic timbers, with watercourses feasible and convenient, it cannot be long before eastern Kentucky will be opened up to great industries. Enterprise has already turned hither, and the distinctiveness of the mountaineer race already begins to disappear. The two futures before them are, to be swept out of these mountains by the in-rushing spirit of contending industries, or to be aroused, civilized, and developed. [267]
- 60. Long before you come in sight of the great Gap, the idea of it dominates the mind. While yet some miles away it looms up, 1675 feet in elevation, some half a mile across from crest to crest, the pinnacle on the left towering to the height of 2500 feet. It was late in the afternoon when our tired horses began the long, winding, rocky climb from the valley to the brow of the pass. As we stood in the passway, amid the deepening shadows of the twilight and the solemn repose of the mighty landscape, the Gap seemed to be crowded with two invisible and countless pageants of human life, the one passing in, the other passing out; and the air grew thick with unheard utterances—primeval sounds, undistinguishable and strange, of creatures nameless and never seen by man; the wild rush and whoop of retreating and pursuing tribes; the slow steps of watchful pioneers; the wail of dying children and the songs of homeless women; the muffled tread of routed and broken armies— all the sounds of surprise and delight, victory and defeat, hunger and pain, and weariness and despair, that the human heart can utter. Here passed the first of the white race who led the way into the valley of the Cumberland; here passed that small band of fearless men who gave the Gap its name; here passed the "Long Hunters;" here rushed the armies of the Civil War; here has passed the wave of westerly emigration, whose force has spent itself only on the Pacific slopes; and here in the long future must flow backward and forward the wealth of the North and the South. [268] [269] [270] [271]
- 61. MOUNTAIN PASSES OF THE CUMBERLAND I he writer has been publishing during the last few years a series of articles on Kentucky. With this article the series will be brought to a close. Hitherto he has written of nature in the Blue-grass Region and of certain aspects of life; but as he comes to take leave of his theme, he finds his attention fixed upon that great mountain wall which lies along the southeastern edge of the State. At various points of this wall are now beginning to be enacted new scenes in the history of Kentucky; and what during a hundred years has been an inaccessible background, is becoming the fore-front of a civilization which will not only change the life of the State within, but advance it to a commanding position in national economic affairs. But it should not be lost sight of that in writing this article, as in writing all the others, it is with the human problem in Kentucky that he is solely concerned. He will seem to be dealing with commercial activities for their own sake. He will write of coals and ores and timbers, of ovens and tunnels and mines; but if the reader will bear with him to the end, he will learn that these are dealt with only for the sake of looking beyond them at the results which they bring on: town-making in various stages, the massing and distributing of wealth, the movements of population, the dislodgment of isolated [272]
- 62. customs—on the whole, results that lie in the domain of the human problem in its deepest phases. Consider for a moment, then, what this great wall is, and what influence it has had over the history of Kentucky and upon the institutions and characteristics of its people. You may begin at the western frontier of Kentucky on the Mississippi River, about five hundred miles away, and travel steadily eastward across the billowy plateau of the State, going up and up all the time until you come to its base, and above its base it rises to the height of some three thousand feet. For miles before you reach it you discover that it is defended by a zone of almost inaccessible hills with steep slopes, forests difficult to penetrate, and narrow jagged gorges; and further defended by a single sharp wall-like ridge, having an elevation of about twenty-two hundred feet, and lying nearly parallel with it, at a distance of about twenty miles. Or, if you should attempt to reach this wall from the south, you would discover that from that side also it is hardly less hostile to approach. Hence it has stood in its virgin wilderness, a vast isolating and isolated barrier, fierce, beautiful, storm-racked, serene; in winter, brown and gray, with its naked woods and rifts of stone, or mantled in white; in summer, green, or of all greens from darkest to palest, and touched with all shades of bloom; in autumn, colored like the sunset clouds; curtained all the year by exquisite health-giving atmospheres, lifting itself all the year towards lovely, changing skies. Understand the position of this natural fortress-line with regard to the area of Kentucky. That area has somewhat the shape of an enormous flat foot, with a disjointed big toe, a roughly hacked-off ankle, and a missing heel. The sole of this huge foot rests solidly on Tennessee, the Ohio River trickles across the ankle and over the top, the big toe is washed entirely off by the Tennessee River, and the long-missing heel is to be found in Virginia, never having been ceded by that State. Between the Kentucky foot and the Virginia heel is piled up this immense, bony, grisly mass of the Cumberland [273]
- 63. Mountain, extending some three hundred miles north-east and south-west. It was through this heel that Kentucky had to be peopled. The thin, half-starved, weary line of pioneer civilizers had to penetrate it, and climb this obstructing mountain wall, as a line of travelling ants might climb the wall of a castle. In this case only the strongest of the ants—the strongest in body, the strongest in will—succeeded in getting over and establishing their colony in the country far beyond. Luckily there was an enormous depression in the wall, or they might never have scaled it. During about half a century this depression was the difficult, exhausting entrance-point through which the State received the largest part of its people, the furniture of their homes, and the implements of their civilization; so that from the very outset that people represented the most striking instance of a survival of the fittest that may be observed in the founding of any American commonwealth. The feeblest of the ants could not climb the wall; the idlest of them would not. Observe, too, that, once on the other side, it was as hard to get back as it had been to get over. That is, the Cumberland Mountain kept the little ultramontane society isolated. Being isolated, it was kept pure-blooded. Being isolated, it developed the spirit and virtues engendered by isolation. Hence those traits for which Kentuckians were once, and still think themselves, distinguished—passion for self-government, passion for personal independence, bravery, fortitude, hospitality. On account of this mountain barrier the entire civilization of the State has had a one-sided development. It has become known for pasturage and agriculture, whiskey, hemp, tobacco, and fine stock. On account of it the great streams of colonization flowing from the North towards the South, and flowing from the Atlantic seaboard towards the West, have divided and passed around Kentucky as waters divide and pass around an island, uniting again on the farther side. It has done the like for the highways of commerce, so that the North has become woven to the South and the East woven to the West by a connecting tissue of railroads, dropping Kentucky out as though it had no vital connection, as though it were not a controlling point of connection, [274] [275]
- 64. for the four sections of the country. Thus keeping out railroads, it has kept out manufactures, kept out commerce, kept out industrial cities. For three-quarters of a century generations of young Kentuckians have had to seek pursuits of this character in other quarters, thus establishing a constant draining away from the State of its resolute, vigorous manhood. Restricting the Kentuckians who have remained to an agricultural type of life, it has brought upon them a reputation for lack of enterprise. More than all this has that great barrier wall done for the history of Kentucky. For, within a hundred years, the only thing to take possession of it, slowly, sluggishly overspreading the region of its foot-hills, its vales and fertile slopes—the only thing to take possession of it and to claim it has been a race of mountaineers, an idle, shiftless, ignorant, lawless population, whose increasing numbers, pauperism, and lawlessness, whose family feuds and clan-like vendettas, have for years been steadily gaining for Kentucky the reputation for having one of the worst backwoods populations on the continent, or, for that matter, in the world. But for the presence of this wall the history of the State, indeed the history of the United States, would have been profoundly different. Long ago, in virtue of its position, Kentucky would have knit together, instead of holding apart, the North and the South. The campaigns and the results of the Civil War would have been changed; the Civil War might never have taken place. But standing as it has stood, it has left Kentucky, near the close of the first century of its existence as a State, with a reputation somewhat like the shape of its territory—unsymmetric, mutilated, and with certain parts missing. But now consider this wall of the Cumberland Mountain from another point of view. If you should stand on the crest at any point where it forms the boundary of Kentucky; or south of it, where it extends into Tennessee; or north of it, where it extends into Virginia—if you should stand thus and look northward, you would look out upon a vast area of coal. For many years now it has been known that the [276]
- 65. coal-measure rocks of eastern Kentucky comprise about a fourth of the area of the State, and are not exceeded in value by those of any other State. It has been known that this buried solar force exceeds that of Great Britain. Later it has become known that the Kentucky portion of the great Appalachian coal-field contains the largest area of rich cannel-coals yet discovered, these having been traced in sixteen counties, and some of them excelling by test the famous cannel-coal of Great Britain; later it has become known that here is to be found the largest area of coking-coal yet discovered, the main coal—discovered a few years ago, and named the "Elkhorn"—having been traced over sixteen hundred square miles, and equalling American standard coke in excellence. MAP SHOWING MOUNTAIN PASSES OF THE CUMBERLAND. Further, looking northward, you look out upon a region of iron ores, the deposits in Kentucky ranking sixth in variety and extent among those to be found in all other States, and being better disposed for working than any except those of Virginia, Tennessee, and Alabama. For a hundred years now, it should be remembered in this connection, iron has been smelted in Kentucky, been and been an important article of commerce. As early as 1823 it was made at Cumberland Gap, and shipped by river to markets as remote as New Orleans and St. Louis. At an early date, also, it was made in a small charcoal forge at Big Creek Gap, and was hauled in wagons into [277] [278]
- 66. central Kentucky, where it found a ready market for such purposes as plough-shares and wagon tires. Further, looking northward, you have extending far and wide before you the finest primeval region of hard-woods in America. Suppose, now, that you turn and look from this same crest of the Cumberland Mountain southward, or towards the Atlantic seaboard. In that direction there lie some two hundred and fifty thousand square miles of country which is practically coalless; but practically coalless, it is incalculably rich in iron ores for the manufacture of iron and steel. You look out upon the new industrial empire of the United States, with vast and ever-growing needs of manufactures, fuel, and railroads. That is, for a hundred miles you stand on the dividing line of two distinct geological formations: to the north, the Appalachian coal-fields; to the south, mountains of iron ores; rearing itself between these, this immense barrier wall, which creates an unapproachable wilderness not only in southeastern Kentucky, but in East Tennessee, western Virginia, and western North Carolina—the largest extent of country in the United States remaining undeveloped. But the time had to come when this wilderness would be approached on all sides, attacked, penetrated to the heart. Such wealth of resources could not be let alone or remain unused. As respects the development of the region, the industrial problem may be said to have taken two forms—the one, the development of the coal and iron on opposite sides of the mountains, the manufacture of coke and iron and steel, the establishment of wood-working industries, and the delivery of all products to the markets of the land; second, the bringing together of the coals on the north side and the ores throughout the south. In this way, then, the Cumberland Mountain no longer offered a barrier merely to the civilization of Kentucky, but to the solution of the greatest economic problem of the age—the cheapest manufacture of iron and steel. But before the pressure of this need the mountain had to give way and [279]
- 67. surrender its treasures. At any cost of money and labor, the time had to come when it would pay to bring these coals and ores together. But how was this to be done? The answer was simple: it must be done by means of natural water gaps and by tunnels through the mountain. It is the object of this paper to call attention to the way in which the new civilization of the South is expected to work at four mountain passes, and to point out some of the results which are to follow. II On the Kentucky side of the mighty wall of the Cumberland Mountain, and nearly parallel with it, is the sharp single wall of Pine Mountain, the westernmost ridge of the Alleghany system. For about a hundred miles these two gnarled and ancient monsters lie crouched side by side, guarding between them their hidden stronghold of treasure—an immense valley of timbers and irons and coals. Near the middle point of this inner wall there occurs a geological fault. The mountain falls apart as though cut in twain by some heavy downward stroke, showing on the faces of the fissure precipitous sides wooded to the crests. There is thus formed the celebrated and magnificent pass through which the Cumberland River—one of the most beautiful in the land—slips silently out of its mountain valley, and passes on to the hills and the plateaus of Kentucky. In the gap there is a space for the bed of this river, and on each side of the river space for a roadway and nothing more. [280]
- 68. CUMBERLAND GAP. Note the commanding situation of this inner pass. Travel east along Pine Mountain or travel west, and you find no other water gap within a hundred miles. Through this that thin, toiling line of pioneer civilizers made its way, having scaled the great outer Cumberland wall some fifteen miles southward. But for this single geological fault, by which a water gap of the inner mountain was placed opposite a depression in the outer mountain, thus creating a continuous passway through both, the colonization of Kentucky, difficult enough even with this advantage, would have been indefinitely delayed, or from this side wholly impossible. Through this inner portal was traced in time the regular path of the pioneers, afterwards known as the Wilderness Road. On account of the travel over this road and the controlling nature of the site, there was long ago formed on the spot a little backwoods settlement, calling itself Pineville. It consisted of a single straggling line of cabins and shanties of logs on each side of a roadway, this road being the path [281] [282] [283]
- 69. of the pioneers. In the course of time it was made the county-seat. Being the county-seat, the way-side village, catching every traveller on foot or on horse or in wagons, began some years ago to make itself still better known as the scene of mountain feuds. The name of the town when uttered anywhere in Kentucky suggested but one thing—a blot on the civilization of the State, a mountain fastness where the human problem seems most intractable. A few such places have done more to foster the unfortunate impression which Kentucky has made upon the outside world than all the towns of the blue-grass country put together. Five summers ago, in 1885, in order to prepare an article for Harper's Magazine on the mountain folk of the Cumberland region, I made my way towards this mountain town, now riding on a buck-board, now on a horse whose back was like a board that was too stiff to buck. The road I travelled was that great highway between Kentucky and the South which at various times within a hundred years has been known as the Wilderness Road, or the Cumberland Road, or the National Turnpike, or the "Kaintuck Hog Road," as it was called by the mountaineers. It is impossible to come upon this road without pausing, or to write of it without a tribute. It led from Baltimore over the mountains of Virginia through the great wilderness by Cumberland Gap. All roads below Philadelphia converged at this gap, just as the buffalo and Indian trails had earlier converged, and just as many railroads are converging now. The improvement of this road became in time the pet scheme of the State governments of Virginia and Kentucky. Before the war millions of head of stock—horses, hogs, cattle, mules—were driven over it to the southern markets; and thousands of vehicles, with families and servants and trunks, have somehow passed over it, coming northward into Kentucky, or going southward on pleasure excursions. During the war vast commissary stores passed back and forth, following the movement of armies. But despite all this—despite all that has been done to civilize it since Boone traced its course in 1790, this honored historic thoroughfare remains to-day as it was in the beginning, with all its [284] [285]
- 70. sloughs and sands, its mud and holes, and jutting ledges of rock and loose bowlders, and twists and turns, and general total depravity. It is not surprising that when the original Kentuckians were settled on the blue-grass plateau they sternly set about the making of good roads, and to this day remain the best road-builders in America. One such road was enough. They are said to have been notorious for profanity, those who came into Kentucky from this side. Naturally. Many were infidels—there are roads that make a man lose faith. It is known that the more pious companies of them, as they travelled along, would now and then give up in despair, sit down, raise a hymn, and have prayers before they could go farther. Perhaps one of the provocations to homicide among the mountain people should be reckoned this road. I have seen two of the mildest of men, after riding over it for a few hours, lose their temper and begin to fight— fight their horses, fight the flies, fight the cobwebs on their noses, fight anything. Over this road, then, and towards this town, one day, five summers ago, I was picking my course, but not without pale human apprehensions. At that time one did not visit Pineville for nothing. When I reached it I found it tense with repressed excitement. Only a few days previous there had been a murderous affray in the streets; the inhabitants had taken sides; a dead-line had been drawn through the town, so that those living on either side crossed to the other at the risk of their lives; and there was blue murder in the air. I was a stranger; I was innocent; I was peaceful. But I was told that to be a stranger and innocent and peaceful did no good. Stopping to eat, I fain would have avoided, only it seemed best not to be murdered for refusing. All that I now remember of the dinner was a corn-bread that would have made a fine building stone, being of an attractive bluish tint, hardening rapidly upon exposure to the atmosphere, and being susceptible of a high polish. A block of this, freshly quarried, I took, and then was up and away. But not quickly, for having exchanged my horse for another, I found that the latter moved off as though at every step expecting to cross the dead-line, [286]
- 71. and so perish. The impression of the place was one never to be forgotten, with its squalid hovels, its ragged armed men collected suspiciously in little groups, with angry, distrustful faces, or peering out from behind the ambush of a window. A few weeks ago I went again to Pineville, this time by means of one of the most extensive and powerful railroad systems of the South. At the station a 'bus was waiting to take passengers to the hotel. The station was on one side of the river, the hotel on the other. We were driven across a new iron bridge, this being but one of four now spanning the river formerly crossed at a single ford. At the hotel we were received by a porter of metropolitan urbanity and self-esteem. Entering the hotel, I found it lighted by gas, and full of guests from different parts of the United States. In the lobby there was a suppressed murmur of refined voices coming from groups engaged in serious talk. As by-and-by I sat in a spacious dining-room, looking over a freshly-printed bill of fare, some one in the parlors opposite was playing on the piano airs from "Tannhäuser" and "Billee Taylor." The dining-room was animated by a throng of brisk, tidy, white young waiting-girls, some of whom were far too pretty to look at except from behind a thick napkin; and presently, to close this experience of the new Pineville, there came along such inconceivable flannel-cakes and molasses that, forgetting industrial and social problems, I gave myself up to the enjoyment of a problem personal and gastric; and erelong, having spread myself between snowy sheets, I melted away, as the butter between the cakes, into warm slumber, having first poured over myself a syrup of thanksgiving. The next morning I looked out of my window upon a long pleasant valley, mountain-sheltered, and crossed by the winding Cumberland; here and there cottages of a smart modern air already built or building; in another direction, business blocks of brick and stone, graded streets and avenues and macadamized roads; and elsewhere, saw and planing mills, coke ovens, and other evidences of commercial development. Through the open door of a church I saw a Catholic congregation already on its knees, and the [287] [288]
- 72. worshippers of various Protestant denominations were looking towards their own temples. The old Pineville, happily situated farther down the river, at the very opening of the pass, was rapidly going to ruins. The passion for homicide had changed into a passion for land speculation. The very man on whose account at my former visit the old Pineville had been divided into two deadly factions, whose name throughout all the region once stood for mediæval violence, had become a real-estate agent. I was introduced to him. "Sir," said I, "I don't feel so very much afraid of you." "Sir," said he, "I don't like to run myself." Such, briefly, is the impression made by the new Pineville—a new people there, new industries, new moral atmosphere, new civilization. The explanation of this change is not far to seek. By virtue of its commanding position as the only inner gateway to the North, this pass was the central point of distribution for south-eastern Kentucky. Flowing into the Cumberland, on the north side of the mountain, is Clear Creek, and on the south side is Strait Creek, the two principal streams of this region, and supplying water-power and drainage. Tributary to these streams are, say, half a million acres of noble timber land; in the mountains around, the best coals, coking and domestic; elsewhere, iron ores, pure brown, hematite, and carbonates; inexhaustible quantities of limestone, blue-gray sandstone, brick clays; gushing from the mountains, abundant streams of healthful freestone water; on the northern hill-sides, a deep loam suitable for grass and gardens and fruits. Add to this that through this water-gap, following the path of the Wilderness Road, as the Wilderness Road had followed the path of the Indian and the buffalo—through this water-gap would have to pass all railroads that should connect the North and South by means of that historic and ancient highway of traffic and travel. [289]
- 73. On the basis of these facts, three summers ago a few lawyers in Louisville bought 300 acres of land near the riotous old town of Pineville, and in the same summer was organized the Pine Mountain Iron and Coal Company, which now, however, owns about twenty thousand acres, with a capital stock of $2,000,000. It should be noted that Southern men and native capital began this enterprise, and that although other stockholders are from Chicago and New England, most of the capital remains in the State. Development has been rapidly carried forward, and over five hundred thousand dollars' worth of lots have been sold the present year. It is pleasant to dwell upon the future that is promised for this place; pleasant to hear that over six hundred acres in this pleasant valley are to be platted; that there are to be iron-furnaces and electric lights, concrete sidewalks and a street railway, more bridges, brick-yards, and a high-school; and that the seventy-five coke ovens now in blast are to be increased to a thousand. Let it be put down to the credit of this vigorous little mountain town that it is the first place in that region to put Kentucky coke upon the market, and create a wide demand for it in remote quarters—Cincinnati alone offering to take the daily output of 500 ovens. Thus the industrial and human problems are beginning to solve themselves side by side in the backwoods of Kentucky. You begin with coke and end with Christianity. It is the boast of Pineville that as soon as it begins to make its own iron it can build its houses without calling on the outside world for an ounce of material. III Middlesborough! For a good many years in England and throughout the world the name has stood associated with wealth and commercial greatness—the idea of a powerful city near the mouth of the Tees, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, which has become the principal seat of the English iron trade. It is therefore curious to [290] [291]
- 74. remember that near the beginning of the century there stood on the site of this powerful city four farm-houses and a ruined shrine of St. Hilda; that it took thirty years to bring the population up to the number of one hundred and fifty-four souls; that the discovery of ironstone, as it seems to be called on that side, gave it a boom, as it is called on this; so that ten years ago it had some sixty thousand people, its hundred and thirty blast-furnaces, besides other industries, and an annual output in pig-iron of nearly two million tons. But there is now an English Middlesborough in America, which is already giving to the name another significance in the stock market of London and among the financial journals of the realm; and if the idea of its founders is ever realized, if its present rate of development goes on, it will in time represent as much wealth in gold and iron as the older city. In the mere idea of the American or Kentucky Middlesborough—for while it seems to be meant for America, it is to be found in Kentucky —there is something to arrest attention on the score of originality. That the attention of wealthy commoners, bankers, scientists, and iron-masters of Great Britain—some of them men long engaged in copper, tin, and gold mines in the remotest quarters of the globe— that the attention of such men should be focussed on a certain spot in the backwoods of Kentucky; that they should repeatedly send over experts to report on the combination of mineral and timber wealth; that on the basis of such reports they should form themselves into a company called "The American Association, Limited," and purchase 60,000 acres of land lying on each side of the Cumberland Mountain, and around the meeting-point of the States of Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky; that an allied association, called "The Middlesborough Town Company," should place here the site of a city, with the idea of making it the principal seat of the iron and steel manufacture of the United States; that they should go to work to create this city outright by pouring in capital for every needed purpose; that they should remove gigantic [292]
- 75. obstacles in order to connect it with the national highways of commerce; that they should thus expend some twenty million dollars, and let it be known that all millions further wanted were forthcoming—in the idea of this there is enough to make one pause. As one cannot ponder the idea of the enterprise without being impressed with its largeness, so one cannot visit the place without being struck by the energy with which the plan is being wrought at. "It is not sufficient to know that this property possesses coal and iron of good quality and in considerable quantities, and that the deposits are situated close together, but that they exist in such circumstances as will give us considerable advantages over any competitors that either now exist or whose existence can in any way be foreseen in the near future." Such were the instructions of these English capitalists to their agent in America. It was characteristic of their race and of that method of business by which they have become the masters of commerce the world over. In it is the germ of their idea—to establish a city for the manufacture of iron and steel which, by its wealth of resources, advantages of situation, and complete development, should place competition at a disadvantage, and thus make it impossible. It yet remains to be seen whether this can be done. Perhaps even the hope of it came from an inadequate knowledge of how vast a region they had entered, and how incalculable its wealth. Perhaps it was too much to expect that any one city, however situated, however connected, however developed, should be able to absorb or even to control the development of that region and the distribution of its resources to all points of the land. It suggests the idea of a single woodpecker's hoping to carry off the cherries from a tree which a noble company of cats and jays and other birds were watching; or of a family of squirrels who should take up their abode in a certain hole with the idea of eating all the walnuts in a forest. But however this may turn out, these Englishmen, having once set before themselves their aim, have never swerved from trying to attain it; and they are at work developing their city with the hope [293] [294]
- 76. that it will bring as great a change in the steel market of the United States as a few years ago was made in the iron market by the manufacture of Southern iron. If you take up in detail the working out of their plan of development, it is the same—no stint, no drawing back or swerving aside, no abatement of the greatest intentions. They must have a site for their city—they choose for this site what with entire truthfulness may be called one of the most strategic mountain passes in American history. They must have a name—they choose that of the principal seat of the English iron trade. They must have a plant for the manufacture of steel by the basic process—they promise it shall be the largest in the United States. They want a tannery—it shall be the biggest in the world. A creek has to be straightened to improve drainage—they spend on it a hundred thousand dollars. They will have their mineral resources known—they order a car to be built, stock it with an exposition of their minerals, place it in charge of technical experts, and set it going over the country. They take a notion to establish a casino, sanitarium, and hotel—it must cost over seven hundred thousand dollars. The mountain is in their way—that mighty wall of the Cumberland Mountain which has been in the way of the whole United States for over a hundred years—they remove this mountain; that is, they dig through it a great union tunnel, 3750 feet long, beginning in Kentucky, running under a corner of Virginia, and coming out in Tennessee. Had they done nothing but this, they would have done enough to entitle them to the gratitude of the nation, for it is an event of national importance. It brings the South and the Atlantic seaboard in connection with the Ohio Valley and the Lakes; it does more to make the North and the South one than any other single thing that has happened since the close of the Civil War. On the same trip that took me to Pineville five summers ago, I rode from that place southward towards the wall of Cumberland Mountain. I wished to climb this wall at that vast depression in it known as Cumberland Gap. It was a tranquil afternoon as I took my course over the ancient Wilderness Road through the valley of the [295] [296]
- 77. Yellow Creek. Many a time since, the memory of that ride has come back to me—the forests of magnificent timbers, open spaces of cleared land showing the amphitheatre of hills in the purple distance, the winding of a shadowy green-banked stream, the tranquil loneliness, the purity of primeval solitude. The flitting of a bird between one and the azure sky overhead was company, a wild flower bending over the water's edge was friendship. Nothing broke rudely in upon the spirit of the scene but here and there a way-side log-cabin, with its hopeless squalor, hopeless human inmates. If imagination sought relief from loneliness, it found it only in conjuring from the dust of the road that innumerable caravan of life from barbarism to civilization, from the savage to the soldier, that has passed hither and thither, leaving the wealth of nature unravished, its solitude unbroken. In the hush of the evening and amid the silence of eternity, I drew the rein of my tired horse on the site of the present town. Before me in the mere distance, and outlined against the glory of the sky, there towered at last the mighty mountain wall, showing the vast depression of the gap—the portal to the greatness of the commonwealth. Stretching away in every direction was a wide plain, broken here and there by wooded knolls, and uniting itself with graceful curves to the gentle slopes of the surrounding mountains. The ineffable beauty, the vast repose, the overawing majesty of the historic portal, the memories, the shadows—they are never to be forgotten. [297] [298] [299]
- 78. FORD ON THE CUMBERLAND. A few weeks ago I reached the same spot as the sun was rising, having come thither from Pineville by rail. As I stepped from the train I saw that the shadowy valley of my remembrance had been incredibly transformed. Some idea of the plan of the new town may be understood from the fact that Cumberland Avenue and Peterborough Avenue, intersecting each other near the central point of it, are, when completed, to be severally three and a half or four and a half miles long. There are twenty avenues and thirty streets in all, ranging from a hundred feet to sixty feet wide. So long and broad and level are the thoroughfares that the plan, as projected, suggests comparison with Louisville. The valley site itself contains some six thousand available acres. It should be understood that the company owns property on the Tennessee side of the gap, and that at the foot of the valley, where a magnificent spring gushes out, with various other mineral springs near by—chalybeate and sulphur—it is proposed to establish a hotel,
- 79. sanitarium, and casino which shall equal in sumptuousness the most noted European spas. As I stood one day in this valley, which has already begun to put on the air of civilization, with its hotel and railway station and mills and pretty hometeads, I saw a sight which seemed to me a complete epitome of the past and present tendencies there at work—a summing up of the past and a prophecy of the future. Creeping slowly past the station—so slowly that one knows not what to compare it to unless it be the minute-hand on the dial of a clock— creeping slowly along the Wilderness Road towards the ascent of Cumberland Gap, there came a mountain wagon, faded and old, with its dirty ragged canvas hanging motionless, and drawn by a yoke of mountain oxen which seemed to be moving in their sleep. On the seat in front, with a faded shovel-hat capping his mass of coarse tangled hair, and wearing but two other garments—a faded shirt and faded breeches—sat a faded, pinched, and meagre mountain boy. The rope with which he drove his yoke had dropped between his clasped knees. He had forgotten it; there was no need to remember it. His starved white face was kindled into an expression of passionate hunger and excitement. In one dirty claw- like hand he grasped a small paper bag, into the open mouth of which he had thrust the other hand, as a miser might thrust his into a bag of gold. He had just bought, with a few cents, some sweetmeat of civilization which he was about for the first time to taste. I sat and watched him move away and begin the ascent to the pass. Slowly, slowly, winding now this way and now that across the face of the mountain, now hidden, now in sight, they went—sleeping oxen, crawling wagon, starved mountain child. At length, as they were about disappearing through the gap, they passed behind a column of the white steam from a saw-mill that was puffing a short distance in front of me; and, hidden in that steam, they disappeared. It was the last of the mountaineers passing away before the breath of civilization. [300] [301]
- 80. IV Suppose now that you stand on the south side of the great wall of the Cumberland Mountain at Cumberland Gap. You have come through the splendid tunnel beneath, or you have crawled over the summit in the ancient way; but you stand at the base on the Tennessee side in the celebrated Powell's River Valley. Turn to the left and follow up this valley, keeping the mountain on your left. You are not the first to take this course: the line of human ants used to creep down it in order to climb over the wall at the gap. Mark how inaccessible this wall is at every other point. Mark, also, that as you go two little black parallel iron threads follow you—a railroad, one of the greatest systems of the South. All along the mountain slope overhanging the railroad, iron ore; beyond the mountain crest, timbers and coals. Observe, likewise, the features of the land: water abundant, clear, and cold; fields heavy with corn and oats; an ever-changing panorama of beautiful pictures. The farther you go the more rich and prosperous the land, the kinder the soil to grains and gardens and orchards; bearing its burden of timbers— walnut, chestnut, oak, and mighty beeches; lifting to the eye in the near distance cultivated hillsides and fat meadows; stretching away into green and shadowy valley glades; tuneful with swift, crystal streams—a land of lovely views. Remember well this valley, lying along the base of the mountain wall. It has long been known as the granary of south-west Virginia and east Tennessee; but in time, in the development of civilization throughout the Appalachian region, it is expected to become the seat of a dense pastoral population, supplying the dense industrial population of new mining and manufacturing towns with milk, butter, eggs, and fruit and vegetables. But for the contiguity of such agricultural districts to the centres of ores and coals, it would perhaps be impossible to establish in these remote spots the cities necessary to develop and transport their wealth. [302]
- 81. Follow this valley up for a distance of sixty miles from Cumberland Gap and there pause, for you come to the head of the valley, and you have reached another pass in the mountain wall. You have passed out of Tennessee into Virginia, a short distance from the Kentucky border, and the mountain wall is no longer called the Cumberland: twenty miles southwest of where you now are that mountain divided, sending forth this southern prong, called Stone Mountain, and sending the rest of itself between the State line of Kentucky and Virginia, under the name of the Big Black Mountain. Understand, also, the general bearings of the spot at which you have arrived. It is in that same Alleghany system of mountains—the richest metalliferous region in the world—the northern section of which long ago made Pittsburgh; the southern section of which has since created Birmingham; and the middle section of which, where you now are, is claimed by expert testimony, covering a long period of years and coming from different and wholly uninterested authorities, to be the richest of the three. This mountain pass not being in Kentucky, it might be asked why in a series of articles on Kentucky it should deserve a place. The answer is plain: not because a Kentuckian selected it as the site of a hoped for city, or because Kentuckians have largely developed it, or because Kentuckians largely own it, and have stamped upon it a certain excellent social tone; but for the reason that if the idea of its development is carried out, it will gather towards itself a vast net- work of railways from eastern Kentucky, the Atlantic seaboard, the South, and the Ohio and Mississippi valleys, which will profoundly affect the inner life of Kentucky, and change its relations to different parts of the Union. Big Stone Gap! It does not sound very big. What is it? At a certain point of this continuation of Cumberland Mountain, called Stone Mountain, the main fork of Powell's River has in the course of ages worn itself a way down to a practical railroad pass at water-level, thus opening connection between the coking coal on the north and the iron ores on the south of the mountain. No pass that I have ever [303] [304]
- 82. seen—except those made by the Doe River in the Cranberry region of North Carolina—has its wild, enrapturing loveliness; towering above on each side are the mountain walls, ancient and gray and rudely disordered; at every coign of vantage in these, grasping their precipitous buttresses as the claw of a great eagle might grasp the uttermost brow of a cliff, enormous trees above trees, and amid the trees a green lace-work of undergrowth. Below, in a narrow, winding channel piled high with bowlders, with jutting rocks and sluice-like fissures—below and against these the river hurls itself, foaming, roaring, whirling, a long cascade of white or lucent water. This is Big Stone Gap, and the valley into which the river pours its full strong current is the site of the town. A lofty valley it is, having an elevation of 1600 feet above the sea, with mountains girdling it that rise to the height of 4000—a valley the surface of which gently rolls and slopes towards these encircling bases with constant relief to the eye, and spacious enough, with those opening into it, to hold a city of the population of New York. This mountain pass, lying in the heart of this reserved wilderness of timbers, coals, and ores, has always had its slender thread of local history. It was from a time immemorial a buffalo and Indian trail, leading to the head-waters of the Cumberland and Kentucky rivers; during the Civil War it played its part in certain local military exploits and personal adventures of a quixotian flavor; and of old the rich farmers of Lee County used to drive their cattle through it to fatten on the pea-vine and blue-grass growing thick on the neighboring mountain tops. But in the last twenty-five years—that quarter of the century which has developed in the United States an ever-growing need of iron and steel, of hard-woods, and of all varieties of coal; a period which has seen one after another of the reserve timber regions of the country thinned and exhausted—during the past twenty-five years attention has been turned more and more towards the forests and the coal-fields in the region occupied by the south Alleghany Mountain system. [305]
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