Maryland Day

Date: 04/26/2008
Venue: Outside Kim Building

Maryland day is celebrated to showcase how UM's international community and partnerships enhance the university's position as a global leader in providing higher education to students from around the world, as well as its standing as a top public research and land-grant university.

It was a bright and sunny day with people flocking the whole campus. The whole campus was a sea of red. The terps made their presence felt with wonderful displays all around. The main crowd puller on that day was the 50,000 cup cakes given by the University. Marylanders, mostly young children flocked the stalls to catch a glimpse of the latest technology and grab some freebies.

TSAN was a part of the wonderful event and it was a unique opportunity for us to showcase our skills and technology. Our stalls had telecom related chart displays, sports quiz, entertainment quiz, political quiz and fun quiz. We also had Video displays of funny telecom commercials. But the main attraction for the kids were the candies and freebies on offer in our stalls. Kids stormed the TSAN stalls to grab a piece of eye-catching candy. TSAN members were present in the stalls to explain the latest trends in Telecom industry and how we here in Maryland are playing a part in heading the technology revolution.

All in all it was a splendid day!! Members who were a part of that occasion had a truly unforgettable experience.

Voice over Internet Protocol

TSAN Speaker Series I, 24th Sept 2007

Speaker: Steve Bromley, Foundry Networks (sbromley [at] foundrynet [dot] com)
Position held: Systems Engineer: Mid Atlantic Regional Business

- Foundry Networks: Providing high performance solutions for Enterprise and Service Provider Organizations
- Foundry products and customers.
- Steve also brought a 48-port Foundry Switch along with himself.

Steve also discussed the following features of VoIP technology:
- VoIP technology and its business value.
- SIP call flow.
- Security issues and measures taken to combat intrusions.
- QoS schemes for prioritizing VoIP traffic.
- Implementation of VoIP over a wireless network.

The presentation can be downloaded here.

Telecommunications: From a Utility Company to a Growth Company

TSAN Speaker Series II, 16th Nov 2007

Speaker: Gary Gadson, AT&T (gary [dot] gadson [at] att [dot] com)
Positions held: Senior Software Engineer, Product Manager, Business Developer

* Telecommunications Industry Trends:

- The Telecommunications Industry: Origin of a monopoly.
- The Government influence: Fostered competition among local companies.
- The Telecommunications Act of 1996: vertically integration of the industry.
- Municipal franchise reforms and spectrum utilization.

* AT&T strategy:

- Consumer classification: Consumers & Large Enterprise Businesses.
- Business decisions driven by growth rate and not technology.
- Trend towards data services as against voice to retain constant growth rate.
- Growth of Wireless, Broadband, Business voice.
- Data serving for application hosting, and IP based services called UVERSE.
- AT&T’s decision making strategy
- AT&T's major acquistions to meet the consumer demand.