Ant-Like Persistence

With the fast pace of technological change, one of the biggest problems has been the “last mile” problem.  High-speed internet has little difficulty reaching a node that might be a mile away from your home or office.  But that pesky “last mile” is the challenge. (For example our Westminster office is far enough from the phone company central office that DSL is not very fast.)

It’s not only Internet connectivity that suffers from the “last mile” problem.  For package delivery, in desperation Fedex devised the misnamed Smartpost, a service in which Fedex hands off your package to the Postal Service for that last mile of delivery.  And UPS devised the equally misnamed Surepost which works the same way.

So I was fascinated to be reminded of a “last mile” solution for internet access that Google proposed a few years ago, called TiSP.  The idea was that you would drop a weighted fiber-optic cable down your sewer line and it would reach an internet node.  Continue reading “Solving the “last mile” problem”

If you are going to have someone send you funds by means of an international bank wire, what instructions should you give to them?  Thirty years ago my firm did what I suppose most firms do.  We went to our bank we asked our bank what to tell the sender.  Our bank very promptly and cheerfully provided detailed “incoming bank wire instructions” including a Swift code and an ABA routing number.  We then dutifully provided this information to all of our foreign associates for use in paying us for the work that we do for them.

It turns out that this is approximately the stupidest thing to do.

Our patent firm has changed banks from time to time over the years.  But what has not changed is that each bank has charged us some amount of money for each incoming bank wire.  Our most recent bank (Wells Fargo) usually charges us at least $16 for each incoming foreign bank wire, or as much as $33 if it feels the wire required “repair” (whatever that means).  I cringe now to realize that during these decades our banks over the years have charged us many, many thousands of dollars in bank fees for our incoming foreign bank wires.

And the same is true for incoming foreign bank wires to my personal bank account.

Imagine how stupid I feel to have discovered only in recent days that there are common-sense ways to receive foreign bank wires that do not incur bank fees, for businesses and for personal accounts.  Continue reading “Yet another smart way to receive international bank wires”

In which the writer reminisces about the early years of his patent firm and eventually getting a clue about how to send bank wires to foreign associates.  Continue reading “Getting a clue about bank wires”