Password wrote:
Communication Link)before the FAA canned it. The dip ****s
in FAA management decided to kiss the ass of big business
and go with phone companies. The hell with air safety just
kiss that contractor ass and **** away that tax payer money.


I am not privy to the arguments used, but you should note that most
telcos have also replaced microwave links with optical fibre. For one
thing, it isn't affect by weather and it carries a hell of a lot more
data/voice than microwave can.

If the microwave equipment used by FAA was antiquated analogue stuff,
they would have needed to replace it with more modern (but still
limited) digital stuff and the costs might have been much higher than
that of using telco infrastructure.

Having said that, for a mission critical system (and a control tower
would be considered that), you would want two separate lines out of two
different locations in your building going to 2 different carriers. This
would prevent any single backhoe from cutting off your telecom
infrastructure.