Subject: [NEXTEL-1] RE: Wiring a Convention, Version 2004- Real Wireless Enforcement- We even took down Nextel! Timmy How Ya Like Me Now?

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 01 Aug 2004 21:08:41 -0400

-------- Original Message --------
   From: "Ed Tobias" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: [WFHSG] RE: Wiring a Convention, Version 2004- Real
         Wireless Enforcement- We even took down Nextel! Timmy How Ya
         Like Me Now?
     To: <[email-masked]>,<[email-masked]>
     CC: <[email-masked]>

Lou Libin, an RF engineer formally with NBC and now an independent
contractor, is hired by the networks to coordinate RF used at the
conventions.  He, along with a committee made up of broadcast engineers
from the TV nets and local TV engineers in each of the convention
cities, begins planning frequency coordination at least a year prior to
the conventions. Libin and the others have been doing this for decades.
They coordinate with the FCC to obtain special authorization to allow
operation on some frequencies not normally authorized for broadcast RF
and he works with FCC engineers on site to resolve interference
problems.  Believe me, he knows the law and he knows RF.  He's no Barney
Fife. Were it not for Lou's efforts, and those of the coordinating
committee, we'd all be interfering with each other. Coming away from
Boston last week after an operation relatively free of RF interference,
and heading to NY in a couple of weeks to do it all again, I say a big
"thank you" to Lou.  I've been a radio network manager at conventions
since 1980 and, believe me, without the coordinating committee we, and
our TV counterparts, wouldn't be on the air. Ed

     ----- Original Message -----
     From: Alan Dixon
     To: [email-masked]
     Cc: [email-masked]
     Sent: Saturday, July 31, 2004 8:48 PM
     Subject: [WFHSG] RE: Wiring a Convention, Version 2004- Real
     Wireless Enforcement- We even took down Nextel! Timmy How Ya
     Like Me Now?
      Who is this guy Libin--Barney Fife??  Let me get this
     straight.  What we
     have here is a frequency coordinator representing himself (or
     being
     represented as) "Wireless Enforcement", and in charge of a
     "wireless SWAT
     team".  Just who at The Portals died and left this individual
     in charge
     of such matters?

     Then I've got to wonder if Mr. Libin has any real
     understanding of
     wireless communications (as opposed to broadcast) traditional
     protocol
     and courtesy, or of FCC Regulations pertinent to the services
     affected,
     the FCC waivers notwithstanding.

     "Get your bullet, Barney!"  Or your toy tin badge.  Scary.

     -Alan Dixon
     "The Washington Iconoclast"

     --- In [email-masked], Marcelrf@B... wrote:
     Wiring a Convention, Version 2004- Real Wireless Enforcement-
     We even
     took down Nextel! Timmy How Ya Like Me Now?

     Posted on July 29, 2004

     By SETH SCHIESEL
     New York Times

     BOSTON, July 28 - With the Democratic delegates in session
     below and
     giant red, white and blue sausages of balloons swaying above,
     Louis
     Libin has spent much of this week perched near the roof of the

     FleetCenter, binoculars to his eyes, scanning the crowd for
     evildoers.

     Level 9, where Mr. Libin operates, is more heavily secured
     than the
     convention floor and houses vital security operations. But Mr.
     Libin
     is not a Secret Service agent. He is not a police officer.
     Instead, the
     badge hanging from his neck reads Wireless Enforcement.

     Mr. Libin runs the convention's wireless coordination
     committee, and he
     enforces his own brand of zero-tolerance justice. Armed with
     advanced
     detection equipment, Mr.  Libin maintains a lookout for radio
     pirates.

     With so many wireless cameras and microphones, so many walkie-

     talkies, so many cellphones and so many law-enforcement
     agencies,
     "this is probably the busiest, noisiest radio frequency
     environment on
     the
     planet right now," said Mr. Libin, a 45-year-old technology
     consultant
     from Woodmere, N.Y. "We've been working for months on a plan
     to
     divide up the frequencies, and if someone is not complying
     with the
     plan, we have to shut them down."

     In terms of technology, a political convention is rivaled in
     complexity perhaps only by the Olympics. And with the march of

     digital technology, past experience offers only a partial road
     map. After

     all, just four years ago almost no one had even heard of
     Wi-Fi.

     "The convention in 2000 was different because there were so
     many new
     options, this whole dot-com barrage, and no one knew what they
     really
     wanted," said Christopher Gruin, the convention's technology
     director. "This time we know what we want, but the users also
     expect
     more. They notice right when the network goes down. They can
     tell
     exactly when the BlackBerry [sic] goes down."

     If anything goes awry, the cost can be not only financial, but
     political.

     "The operations, technology and logistics of the event have to

     demonstrate and reflect our competence to govern," Mr. Gruin
     said. "If something goes really wrong, it's like, well, if you
     can't run
     a
     convention, how can you run the United States? So for us, that
     really
     raises the stakes."

     Pulling it all off is the work of thousands behind the scenes,
     from
     the high-end producers to the technicians who graft the
     electronic veins and arteries that carry the event to the
     world.
     For them, conventions have not lost their suspense.

     For TV, Some New Tricks

     To know when prime time had truly arrived this week, one had
     only to watch Jane Maxwell. Ms. Maxwell, the leader of CNN's
     special events team, first helped televise a convention in
     1976.
     She joined CNN in 1980 and has overseen operations at every
     convention the network has covered.

     All that experience buys a lot of aplomb, and for much of
     Monday
     evening, even from 10 feet away, it was difficult to tell that
     she
     was doing much of anything as she sat among a few producers
     in CNN's main control suite on the FleetCenter's fifth level.
     No loud noises. No sudden movements.

     But up close, one could sense a change at 10:24 p.m., when
     Hillary
     Rodham Clinton took the stage to introduce her husband. Almost
     like a
     pianist's, Ms. Maxwell's fingers began dancing more quickly
     over the
     32 keys on the console controlling the 32 separate audio feeds

     available to her headset (she generally listened to two to
     four at a
     time).  Her murmurings into her headset became a little more
     urgent.

     The person she spent most of her time talking to, David
     Bohrman, was
     directing the network's coverage from CNN's headquarters in
     Atlanta.

     "One of the big changes this year is that while the control
     room used
     to have to be on a truck here on-site, now the control room
     can be in
     Atlanta," Ms. Maxwell explained on Sunday evening, leaning
     forward
     in an arena seat that would be occupied by the Rhode Island
     delegation 24 hours later.  "There was a time not too long ago
     when
     it would have been cost-prohibitive to home-run everything to
     Atlanta."

     But the plunging cost and soaring availability of
     ultra-high-speed
     fiber optic links allows CNN to transmit the raw feed from 20
     different cameras simultaneously to Atlanta (that's about 200
     megabits a second; a T-1 office data line is 1.5 megabits).
     That means that the network can send less equipment and
     fewer people to a convention site, and use its more extensive
     production systems at home. "So the technology does, in a
     sense, allow us to use less technology," Ms.  Maxwell said.
     But that was not the element of CNN's operation that she was
     proudest of. Rather, it was that CNN had managed to arrange
     the only television platform directly on the convention floor.

     When Ms. Maxwell, 51, was working on her early conventions,
     such a setup could have become a disaster because of the
     crowd noise, which is why networks moved convention
     operations to glassed-in skyboxes.

     But new earpieces and microphones make such an
     arrangement feasible.

     Gesturing down at the anchor Wolf Blitzer, perhaps 50 feet
     away, she said, "See, Wolf has a headset on and you can
     barely see it, but the technology allows us to reduce 90
     percent of the noise in the hall so he can barely hear it. If
     configured correctly, the new microphones also allow us to
     really reduce the noise."

     In the end, whatever the tools, "you can have a technical
     setup that
     just doesn't support what you want to do editorially," she
     said.
     "And editorially, you can say you want to cover it this way,
     but the
     plan might be totally unfeasible.  We try to marry the two."

     Patrolling the Airwaves

     The marriage of technology and journalism - and not just in
     television - is increasingly founded on advances in wireless
     technology, and that is where Mr. Libin and his wireless
     SWAT team come in.

     Until a few years ago, for example, wireless television
     cameras
     almost always used analog technology, and the system required
     someone next to the camera to point the signal to a specific
     receiving station. If the line of sight was blocked, so was
     the picture.

     Networks are still using some analog wireless cameras, but a
     new
     technology known as orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing

     has fostered digital wireless systems that no longer require a
     direct
     line of sight to the base stations. That added flexibility has

     encouraged networks to use more wireless cameras (in addition
     to the ubiquitous wireless microphones and earpieces), and
     that
     surge has made Mr.  Libin's job even more important.

     "We're pretty much overwhelmed by the sheer volume of
     broadcast equipment that is being allowed,'' Mr. Libin said.
     He has spent much of the last six months trying to coordinate
     just who gets to use which frequencies at the convention.
     Mr. Libin, a former NBC technical official who now runs a
     consulting firm, assumed his coordination job essentially
     through
     the acclamation of the major TV networks and the Federal
     Communications Commission, which granted special permits
     and waivers for the event.

     F.C.C. staff members collaborate with him in his Level 9
     aerie,
     focusing on conflicts with law-enforcement and other
     government radio systems, while Mr. Libin's team focuses
     on "civilian'' conflicts.

     "The issue is the smaller broadcasters," Mr. Libin said,
     adding
     that they may not be accustomed to coordinating with other
     crews. "All it takes is one reporter on a wireless microphone,

     and a major network gets knocked off the air."

     Sure enough, around 5:10 p.m. on Monday, he and his floor
     crew spotted a Swedish television crew near the Massachusetts
     delegation. At the convention, Mr. Libin always carries a roll
     of
     numbered stickers that read Approved Radio, and the Swedes'
     equipment didn't have them. They were told to wire up or shut
     down. Less than half an hour later, Mr. Libin's squad
     apprehended
     a television crew from Kansas City.

     On Wednesday morning, Mr. Libin said that his team had taken
     down about 65 unapproved television operations and around 35
     other violators (like merchandise vendors with unapproved
     walkie-
     talkies) in the convention's first two days. An additional
     complication
     is that some frequencies used for the wireless cameras overlap

     with those for Wi-Fi networking systems. Mr. Libin's plan
     allowed
     some space for Wi-Fi, and in certain pockets of the convention
     hall
     wireless networks can be found, but in general the radio
     environment has been too cluttered for reliable widespread
     Wi-Fi
     access. Cellphone companies, however, seem to have
     substantially
     increased their capacity in the area, averting complaints
     about
     cellular coverage. And when it comes to coordinating the
     airwaves,
     even Mr.  Libin's authority goes only so far. "The F.B.I., the
     Secret
     Service - we always tell them exactly where we are, in terms
     of
     frequencies," he said. Then he chuckled. "Of course, they
     don't
     always tell us where they are."

     Wires Find Their Place

     For all of the fancy new wireless technologies and snazzy
     optical
     systems, the bedrock of any major technical event remains
     (mostly)
     men in work boots, toiling on their hands and knees laying
     cables
     and testing connections. In fact, the proliferation of
     wireless devices
     appears to have unleashed a bit of a backlash.

     "We're trying to keep as much as we can on a wired basis,"
     said Mr.
     Gruin, the convention's technical director.  "Wireless is a
     lot less
     secure, and frankly, with the amount of noise in this
     environment,
     it's a lot less reliable for critical applications." That may
     have been
     one reason Luis Santiago was hunched under the flickering
     fluorescent lights of Room 907A (more like a closet) at 3 p.m.

     last Friday, barely visible behind a massive spool of blue
     communications cable that he was trying to feed through a tiny
     hole
     in the closet's floor.

     "Look at this," said Mr. Santiago, a 33-year-old
     communications
     apprentice for Sullivan & McLaughlin, a Boston contractor, his

     voice equal parts weariness and exasperation. "We're trying to

     drop this from here on the ninth floor down to three, and
     instead
     someone is pulling it out on seven." His rubberized yellow
     Nextel
     cellphone crackled to life. "It's going to be a while," called
     a
     woman's voice. "It's a real mess down here."

     Mr. Santiago glanced forlornly back at the hulking spool of
     cable,
     which he said was meant to connect a CBS Radio microphone
     position to a CBS camera location on the convention floor.

     "We did a job at M.I.T. a couple months ago, and that was
     nothing
     compared to this," he said. "The money's good, but the work?
     You're
     filthy and exhausted at the end of the day and you don't want
     to get
     up the next morning, but you do.  And I will say that because
     this is
     such a fast-paced environment, the days fly by and you're
     working
     with some of the best technical people around."

     Verizon, the convention's official telecommunications
     provider,
     established network connections into the FleetCenter that can
     carry a staggering 4.5 gigabits of information a second,
     according to Verizon officials - the equivalent of 3,000 T-1
     lines. And telephone service at the convention site has
     generally
     been robust.

     But data services have not been as solid. Many news
     organizations
     suffered intermittent breakdowns in Internet service, and on
     Tuesday evening the main press pavilion was offline for about
     90
     minutes. A spokesman for Verizon said the company deliberately

     caused the interruption as part of an effort to root out a
     more
     deep-seated network problem, which the company said appeared
     to have been caused by a virus carried by network devices
     provided
     by news organizations. In the interim, a handful of data lines

     provided by other companies, including AT&T, served as a
     backup.

     On Wednesday morning, as three Comcast cable technicians set
     up
     televisions for press workstations next to the stage, they
     joked that
     the data problems here might offer a new front for cable
     competition
     with the phone company. As one of them put it, "We've had a
     lot
     of requests for cable modems.''

     http://www.goupstate.com/apps/pbcs.dll/articleAID=/20040729/ZNYT05/407290

     402/1051/NEWS01

     --

---

From: "John Mullaney" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 2 Aug 2004 13:44:05 -0400

I too had a chance to work with Louis Libin and Jeff Cochran at this years
DNC and was amazed at how well Frequency Coordination went at the event.
They made every attempt to coordinate all of the available spectrum without
bothering any of the regular local daily activities of Boston broadcasters.
I'm sure the job will be harder in NYC but they do a great job.  Alan some
of the links below will give you some idea of Louis qualifications.
 
http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-04-1494A1.pdf
http://rfupdate.broadcastengineering.com/ar/broadcasting_fcc_designates_polc
omms_2/
http://www.rwonline.com/reference-room/special-report/rw-olympics.shtml
http://www.rwonline.com/reference-room/special-report/rw-wtc-tower2.shtml
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:CccMeda-SEQJ:www.k-12world.com/Document
s/JDL-CS_An_Education_From_Paradise_(text_only).pdf+Lou+Libin
<http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:CccMeda-SEQJ:www.k-12world.com/Documen
ts/JDL-CS_An_Education_From_Paradise_(text_only).pdf+Lou+Libin&hl=en> &hl=en

John Mullaney  781-259-9200  cell617-285-8743
Minuteman Communications
11B Lewis Street
Lincoln, MA 01773

  _____  

From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: Sunday, August 01, 2004 9:09 PM
To: [email-masked]
Subject: [NEXTEL-1] RE: Wiring a Convention, Version 2004- Real Wireless
Enforcement- We even took down Nextel! Timmy How Ya Like Me Now?

-------- Original Message -------- 

From: 	 "Ed Tobias" <[email-masked]>	
Subject: 	 Re: [WFHSG] RE: Wiring a Convention, Version 2004- Real
Wireless Enforcement- We even took down Nextel! Timmy How Ya Like Me Now?

Lou Libin, an RF engineer formally with NBC and now an independent
contractor, is hired by the networks to coordinate RF used at the
conventions.  He, along with a committee made up of broadcast engineers from
the TV nets and local TV engineers in each of the convention cities, begins
planning frequency coordination at least a year prior to the conventions.
Libin and the others have been doing this for decades.  They coordinate with
the FCC to obtain special authorization to allow operation on some
frequencies not normally authorized for broadcast RF and he works with FCC
engineers on site to resolve interference problems.  Believe me, he knows
the law and he knows RF.  He's no Barney Fife. Were it not for Lou's
efforts, and those of the coordinating committee, we'd all be interfering
with each other. Coming away from Boston last week after an operation
relatively free of RF interference, and heading to NY in a couple of weeks
to do it all again, I say a big "thank you" to Lou.  I've been a radio
network manager at conventions since 1980 and, believe me, without the
coordinating committee we, and our TV counterparts, wouldn't be on the air.
Ed  

----- Original Message -----
From: Alan Dixon <mailto:[email-masked]> 
To: [email-masked]
Cc: [email-masked]
Sent: Saturday, July 31, 2004 8:48 PM
Subject: [WFHSG] RE: Wiring a Convention, Version 2004- Real Wireless
Enforcement- We even took down Nextel! Timmy How Ya Like Me Now?
 Who is this guy Libin--Barney Fife??  Let me get this straight.  What we 
have here is a frequency coordinator representing himself (or being 
represented as) "Wireless Enforcement", and in charge of a "wireless SWAT 
team".  Just who at The Portals died and left this individual in charge 
of such matters? 

Then I've got to wonder if Mr. Libin has any real understanding of 
wireless communications (as opposed to broadcast) traditional protocol 
and courtesy, or of FCC Regulations pertinent to the services affected, 
the FCC waivers notwithstanding. 

-Alan Dixon 

--- In [email-masked], Marcelrf@B... wrote: 
Wiring a Convention, Version 2004- Real Wireless Enforcement- We even 
took down Nextel! Timmy How Ya Like Me Now? 

Posted on July 29, 2004 

By SETH SCHIESEL 
New York Times 

BOSTON, July 28 - With the Democratic delegates in session below and 
giant red, white and blue sausages of balloons swaying above, Louis 
Libin has spent much of this week perched near the roof of the 
FleetCenter, binoculars to his eyes, scanning the crowd for evildoers. 

Level 9, where Mr. Libin operates, is more heavily secured than the 
convention floor and houses vital security operations. But Mr. Libin 
is not a Secret Service agent. He is not a police officer. Instead, the 
badge hanging from his neck reads Wireless Enforcement. 

Mr. Libin runs the convention's wireless coordination committee, and he 
enforces his own brand of zero-tolerance justice. Armed with advanced 
detection equipment, Mr.  Libin maintains a lookout for radio 
pirates. 

With so many wireless cameras and microphones, so many walkie- 
talkies, so many cellphones and so many law-enforcement agencies, 
"this is probably the busiest, noisiest radio frequency environment on 
the 
planet right now," said Mr. Libin, a 45-year-old technology consultant 
from Woodmere, N.Y. "We've been working for months on a plan to 
divide up the frequencies, and if someone is not complying with the 
plan, we have to shut them down." 

In terms of technology, a political convention is rivaled in 
complexity perhaps only by the Olympics. And with the march of 
digital technology, past experience offers only a partial road map. After 

all, just four years ago almost no one had even heard of Wi-Fi. 

"The convention in 2000 was different because there were so many new 
options, this whole dot-com barrage, and no one knew what they really 
wanted," said Christopher Gruin, the convention's technology 
director. "This time we know what we want, but the users also expect 
more. They notice right when the network goes down. They can tell 
exactly when the BlackBerry [sic] goes down." 

If anything goes awry, the cost can be not only financial, but political. 

"The operations, technology and logistics of the event have to 
demonstrate and reflect our competence to govern," Mr. Gruin 
said. "If something goes really wrong, it's like, well, if you can't run 
a 
convention, how can you run the United States? So for us, that really 
raises the stakes." 

Pulling it all off is the work of thousands behind the scenes, from 
the high-end producers to the technicians who graft the 
electronic veins and arteries that carry the event to the world. 
For them, conventions have not lost their suspense. 

For TV, Some New Tricks 

special events team, first helped televise a convention in 1976. 

All that experience buys a lot of aplomb, and for much of Monday 
evening, even from 10 feet away, it was difficult to tell that she 
was doing much of anything as she sat among a few producers 
in CNN's main control suite on the FleetCenter's fifth level. 
No loud noises. No sudden movements. 

But up close, one could sense a change at 10:24 p.m., when Hillary 
Rodham Clinton took the stage to introduce her husband. Almost like a 
pianist's, Ms. Maxwell's fingers began dancing more quickly over the 
32 keys on the console controlling the 32 separate audio feeds 
available to her headset (she generally listened to two to four at a 
time).  Her murmurings into her headset became a little more urgent. 

The person she spent most of her time talking to, David Bohrman, was 
directing the network's coverage from CNN's headquarters in Atlanta. 

"One of the big changes this year is that while the control room used 
to have to be on a truck here on-site, now the control room can be in 
Atlanta," Ms. Maxwell explained on Sunday evening, leaning forward 
in an arena seat that would be occupied by the Rhode Island 
delegation 24 hours later.  "There was a time not too long ago when 
it would have been cost-prohibitive to home-run everything to 
Atlanta." 

But the plunging cost and soaring availability of ultra-high-speed 

In the end, whatever the tools, "you can have a technical setup that 
just doesn't support what you want to do editorially," she said. 
"And editorially, you can say you want to cover it this way, but the 
plan might be totally unfeasible.  We try to marry the two." 

Patrolling the Airwaves 

Until a few years ago, for example, wireless television cameras 
almost always used analog technology, and the system required 
someone next to the camera to point the signal to a specific 
receiving station. If the line of sight was blocked, so was the picture. 

Networks are still using some analog wireless cameras, but a new 
technology known as orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing 
has fostered digital wireless systems that no longer require a direct 
line of sight to the base stations. That added flexibility has 
encouraged networks to use more wireless cameras (in addition 
to the ubiquitous wireless microphones and earpieces), and that 
surge has made Mr.  Libin's job even more important. 

consulting firm, assumed his coordination job essentially through 

F.C.C. staff members collaborate with him in his Level 9 aerie, 
focusing on conflicts with law-enforcement and other 
government radio systems, while Mr. Libin's team focuses 
on "civilian'' conflicts. 

"The issue is the smaller broadcasters," Mr. Libin said, adding 
that they may not be accustomed to coordinating with other 
crews. "All it takes is one reporter on a wireless microphone, 
and a major network gets knocked off the air." 

Sure enough, around 5:10 p.m. on Monday, he and his floor 
crew spotted a Swedish television crew near the Massachusetts 
delegation. At the convention, Mr. Libin always carries a roll of 
numbered stickers that read Approved Radio, and the Swedes' 
equipment didn't have them. They were told to wire up or shut 
down. Less than half an hour later, Mr. Libin's squad apprehended 
a television crew from Kansas City. 

On Wednesday morning, Mr. Libin said that his team had taken 
down about 65 unapproved television operations and around 35 
other violators (like merchandise vendors with unapproved walkie- 
talkies) in the convention's first two days. An additional complication 
is that some frequencies used for the wireless cameras overlap 
with those for Wi-Fi networking systems. Mr. Libin's plan allowed 
some space for Wi-Fi, and in certain pockets of the convention hall 
wireless networks can be found, but in general the radio 
environment has been too cluttered for reliable widespread Wi-Fi 
access. Cellphone companies, however, seem to have substantially 
increased their capacity in the area, averting complaints about 
cellular coverage. And when it comes to coordinating the airwaves, 
even Mr.  Libin's authority goes only so far. "The F.B.I., the Secret 
Service - we always tell them exactly where we are, in terms of 
frequencies," he said. Then he chuckled. "Of course, they don't 
always tell us where they are." 

Wires Find Their Place 

For all of the fancy new wireless technologies and snazzy optical 
systems, the bedrock of any major technical event remains (mostly) 
men in work boots, toiling on their hands and knees laying cables 
and testing connections. In fact, the proliferation of wireless devices 
appears to have unleashed a bit of a backlash. 

"We're trying to keep as much as we can on a wired basis," said Mr. 
Gruin, the convention's technical director.  "Wireless is a lot less 
secure, and frankly, with the amount of noise in this environment, 
it's a lot less reliable for critical applications." That may have been 
one reason Luis Santiago was hunched under the flickering 
fluorescent lights of Room 907A (more like a closet) at 3 p.m. 
last Friday, barely visible behind a massive spool of blue 
communications cable that he was trying to feed through a tiny hole 
in the closet's floor. 

"Look at this," said Mr. Santiago, a 33-year-old communications 
apprentice for Sullivan & McLaughlin, a Boston contractor, his 
voice equal parts weariness and exasperation. "We're trying to 
drop this from here on the ninth floor down to three, and instead 
someone is pulling it out on seven." His rubberized yellow Nextel 
cellphone crackled to life. "It's going to be a while," called a 
woman's voice. "It's a real mess down here." 

Mr. Santiago glanced forlornly back at the hulking spool of cable, 
which he said was meant to connect a CBS Radio microphone 
position to a CBS camera location on the convention floor. 

"We did a job at M.I.T. a couple months ago, and that was nothing 
compared to this," he said. "The money's good, but the work? You're 
filthy and exhausted at the end of the day and you don't want to get 
up the next morning, but you do.  And I will say that because this is 
such a fast-paced environment, the days fly by and you're working 
with some of the best technical people around." 

Verizon, the convention's official telecommunications provider, 
established network connections into the FleetCenter that can 
carry a staggering 4.5 gigabits of information a second, 
according to Verizon officials - the equivalent of 3,000 T-1 
lines. And telephone service at the convention site has generally 
been robust. 

But data services have not been as solid. Many news organizations 
suffered intermittent breakdowns in Internet service, and on 
Tuesday evening the main press pavilion was offline for about 90 
minutes. A spokesman for Verizon said the company deliberately 
caused the interruption as part of an effort to root out a more 
deep-seated network problem, which the company said appeared 
to have been caused by a virus carried by network devices provided 
by news organizations. In the interim, a handful of data lines 
provided by other companies, including AT&T, served as a backup. 

On Wednesday morning, as three Comcast cable technicians set up 
televisions for press workstations next to the stage, they joked that 
the data problems here might offer a new front for cable competition 
with the phone company. As one of them put it, "We've had a lot 
of requests for cable modems.'' 

-- 

-- 
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