Recently, there have been a couple of Threads referencing the actions and legacies of the former Southern Pacific Railroad.
Sper posted one about the Southern Pacific Pipe Line Co.
EvP Razor posted one referencing the differences between the locomotives that were lettered for Southern Pacific and Souhtern Pacific Lines.
I thought since there was some interest in the legacies of the SP Corp and its appendages, it might be appropriate to bring up the one that seems to be in the Public Eye the most. SPRINT . As noted in the Thread title:
Southern Pacific Railroad Intelligent Network of Telecommunications.
Most folks are familiar with the telephone services provided under the SPRINT names and that it has morphed several times over the recent years.
It is a kind of interesting Corporate story that has its beginnings as a project to sell excess company Telecommunications capacity. by the Southern Pacific Railroad, as it utilized it Railroad ROW to lay telecommunications cables.
There was a recent Thread that was pretty involved in how the laying of those telecommunications were laid and how railroad equipment was utilized in that process, and also how those operations have evolved into some stand alone operators who construct equipment, and lay the cables.
The Thread title was : use of Railroad ROW's for buried cables:
Linked: http://cs.trains.com/TRCCS/forums/p/175779/1929298.aspx#1929298
[ Admittedly, Wikipedia is not a great resource, but this piece of the morphing of Sprint Nextel from its' early incarnations provides a lot of dates and it corporate journey.]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprint_Corporation_%281899-2005%29
The concept of selling excess fiber capacity continues today. I'm not sure what the incremental cost of including more fibers in a cable is, but I'd bet that a 56 fiber cable costs the same to "plant" as a 2 fiber cable.
When I installed several special use networks at the federal installation where I worked, I was fortunate that the folks putting in the fiber cables didn't just install what they needed at the time. I put those "dark" fibers to good use.
Even if there are not extra fibers, the amount of data that can be carried on a single fiber is extraordinary (ranging to 10,000,000,000 bytes per second, or the equivalent of about 100 yards of books on a shelf), meaning that a cable owner can fill up a fiber by selling the space it doesn't use to others as well.
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
I was talking to a former sprint employee this week who didn't know it started as a rr project.
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