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I worked at one of the big three *tower* real estate companies at the height of the wireless bubble. Companies that just owned the land, tower, power, & flashing lights & leased to all the providers to hang up their gear.

There was so much money flowing in 2003 that we built a datacenter that was mainly *for looks*. The walls were glass for easy touring. 40 plasma screens made to look like NORAD so that visiting AT&T executives would see our 10,000 dots on a huge map.

All for show. We didn’t stare at a giant wall of monitors, if the power dropped or a bulb burnt out in a tower, we got SMS alerts. You had a few minutes to tell the FAA before you started pulling $1M/hour fine. The servers were purple to match the L3 switch, the CTO liked purple, thought it popped

8/3/26, 10:04 pm1 repost36 likes

@cpetersen-cs.bsky.social

There was so much cash flying around that when I’d spec out a new set of servers and get estimates they’d make me buy twice as many just to fill the racks the whole way.

Chris Petersen

I definitely remember discussions at Southwestern Bell about a policy of "if it's going into production, buy two" for a while. About the time my contract ended, they were starting a project to get down to *only* five mid-range compute platforms... 😇 #GoodTimes

Then one day the doors were locked. All those wireless companies collapsed, the tower companies, everything. Now it’s just the big 3. /goes back to reading about the endless AI companies all spending way too much money

Vicky Harp

@vickyharp.com

I was trying to tell my kid about "10-10" numbers being advertised on television and it was truly hopeless. Explaining mass market interexchange carriers to someone who has no notion of landlines, much less long distance carriers.

Vicky Harp

@vickyharp.com

The first time I ever saw a hit swappable RAID array was in an MCI office tower in Houston. I later heard some of the equipment from that office was taken home by employees after they didn't get paid during one of the accounting scandals.