Random packets

“We are in the 1975 of the information appliance market...The [3Com] Audrey shouldn’t have been sold in Circuit City next to PCs...Maybe [it] should have been sold in the supermarket next to the lady that hands out cheese samples.” Brian Halla, Chairman, President, and CEO, National Semiconductor

Ruef: In our early dreamy days, we worried about the homeless loitering in the lobbies of four-star hotels to use their laptops and access the wireless Internet hot spot.

Attendee: So, you actually foresaw the collapse of the dot-coms?
An exchange between Adam Ruef, senior director of technology planning for Mobilestar (a company that provides wireless Internet access in hotels, airports, and other hot spots) and an unknown quipster attending Ruef’s talk

“Fiber lines that extend all the way from the central office to America’s homes and businesses, providing speeds of 128 terabits per second and beyond, are the promise of the near future.”
Ross Ireland, CTO and Senior Vice President, SBC Communications

“There might be many ways of accessing the Internet in the future, but there will be only one network. This single network will be a combination of the voice, data and wireless networks of today. The result will be greater cost efficiencies, greater profits and greater benefits to the consumers.”
Craig Barrett, President and COO, Intel

“Today, photonics is at about the same stage of development that electronics was 15 years ago.”
Gururaj “Desh” Deshpande, Chairman, Sycamore Networks