New-found appreciation

Telecommunications Americas, June, 2004 by Sue O'Keefe

There's an old saying that you never fully appreciate what you have until it's gone. As someone who is thankful for just about every aspect of my life, I never truly understood that until a few weeks ago, when the reality of the statement slapped me right in the face. What caused this newfound appreciation? The loss--just for a few days--of most of my communications capabilities during my family's recent move across town.

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Many of our readers probably don't know this, but I've been on maternity leave since late March after the birth of our second daughter. I've also been doing a lot of work from home during that absence from the office. When I took this same route four years ago with daughter #1, the difference between working at home and working in the office was vast: no broadband access, spotty fax accessibility, cell phone coverage a lot less robust than it is today. Now my home office is just as good as being at company headquarters: DSL, a combo fax/printer, voice mail on my home and cell phones, a terrific wireless audio conferencing product called Max Wireless that ClearOne sent to me to trial right before I left for leave.

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All of that went out the window (into a box, actually) during the move. Being the "always-in-touch" junkie that I am (I've been known to accept calls while on roller coasters), the computer was of course the last thing to go onto the moving truck, but it's amazing how difficult things are to find when you have 200 boxes of assorted toys, Christmas tree decorations, clothes and kitchen accessories. We transferred our phone service from one house to another quite nicely, but there was about a 12-hour gap with "dead phone" syndrome at both ends. I've complained before about not being able to get a solid cell signal within my house, so that form of communication was also gone. We also got our new cell phones the day before the move, and in the rush, packed the instructions for initiating the push-to-talk functionality. Fax and printer? Packed. Audio conferencing phone? Packed. I was even forced to draft a copy of this commentary with--gasp!--a pen and paper.

The move is nearly done, and I'm almost back in telecom nirvana. Now if I could just find that last box ...

Editor in Chief