[asterisk-biz] Re: Verizon Interconnection

[Nick Seraphin]

On Mon, 11 Jun 2007 alex at pilosoft.com wrote:

> Incorrect. Don't start the business unless you either can *afford* to do 
> it right, or unless you already *know* how to do it right. 
> 
> If you don't understand the business, *and* you don't understand the 
> technology *and* and you don't have cash to hire people who do...You are 
> up for a failure.
> 
> The whole american enterpreneurship is about substituting clue for cash.
> 
> Problem is, asterisk-biz startups lack clue, *and* they lack cash.


But certainly there are varying degrees of "clueness" in people.  There
are some people who are experts, there are some who are just very
knowledgable, there are some who know "enough to get by", then there's
some that know "enough to be dangerous".

Who determines who has "enough clue", and what "enough clue" is?

For example, I believe I know what I'm doing for the most part, and I know
when I need to ask for help from others.  But I certainly don't know as
much as some people do, and I wouldn't try, for example, to write a book
on the subject.  My experience and expertise is stronger in some areas,
and weaker in others.  There are some things where I know I need to ask
for help, and yet in other areas I know enough to help other people fix
their problems... and these are not "dumb people" either.

It's quite impossible for anyone to know everything about everything, even
in just one subject like VOIP.  And anyone who claims to know everything
should raise a red flag for us to realize they're not being realistic to
say the least.

It always shocked me (and still does, to a certain extent) when I came
across very intelligent people working in the computer industry who didn't
understand basic concepts of IP networking, or for example didn't know
basics about T1 circuits and the hardware required, etc.  But then I
realized that these people had never been in a position to need to learn
these things.  No matter how brilliant you are, if you don't have
practical experience with a subject, and you haven't researched it
yourself, you're simply not going to understand it automatically.  As an
ISP back in the 90's I was dealing with things that seemed very basic to
me, yet were bleeding edge technology to non-internet-savvy computer
experts who at the time could run circles around me with other topics.  It
seemed unusual, for example, that Fortune 500 company computer guru's who
knew a lot of esoteric knowledge of mainframes and (outdated) programming
languages were asking ME questions about networking, internet, telecom,
etc.  But I dealt with these topics every day, and they didn't... so even
though they had been in the industry far longer than I had, I was the
expert in these areas and they were the newbies.

I agree that a service provider should at least have a general level of
competance in the technology he/she uses.  But if everyone waited until
they knew everything they might possibly need to know, there would be no
new startup companies at all, and a lot more people on unemployment or
welfare.  A firm grasp of the basics is very important, yes.  But the
complexities of various VPN technologies and implementations is not really
a "basic" unless your company is selling that technology.  From what I
gather, this topic came up because ONE vendor this company deals with
required it.  I know of many VOIP companies that don't use VPN's for
anything and yet are quite competant, so that's not a prerequisite.  It's
like saying that some VOIP companies do business in China, so if you don't
know all the various technical and legal challenges of doing business in
China, you shouldn't be running a VOIP company in the US because there's
the vague possibility that one day you might do business in China too.

-- Nick