Telecommunication

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A replica of Alexander Graham Bell's original phone at

the Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris
Telecommunication is the transmission of signals over a
distance for the purpose of communication. In modern
times, this process typically involves the sending of
electromagnetic waves by electronic transmitters, but in
earlier years it may have involved the use of smoke
signals, drums or semaphore. Today, telecommunication
is widespread and devices that assist the process, such as
the television, radio and telephone, are common in many
parts of the world. There are also many networks that
connect these devices, including computer networks,
public telephone networks, radio networks and television
networks. Computer communication across the Internet is
one of many examples of telecommunication.
Telecommunication systems are generally designed by
telecommunication engineers. Early inventors in the
field include Alexander Graham Bell, Guglielmo
Marconi, and John Logie Baird. Telecommunication is an
important part of the world economy; this industry's
revenue has been placed at just under 3 percent of the
gross world product.
Contents
[hide]
• 1 Key concepts

• 2 Society and telecommunication

• 3 History

○ 3.1 Early telecommunications

○ 3.2 Telegraph and telephone

○ 3.3 Radio and television

○ 3.4 Computer networks and the Internet

• 4 Modern operation

○ 4.1 Telephone

○ 4.2 Radio and television

 ○ 4.3 The Internet
○ 4.4 Local area networks

• 5 See also
• 6 Notes
• 7 References
• 8 External links
• 9 Credits
Key concepts
Etymology

The word telecommunication was adapted from the French word

télécommunication. It is a compound of the Greek prefix tele- (τηλε-),
meaning 'far off,' and the Latin communicare, meaning 'to share.'[1]

Basic elements
Each telecommunication system consists of three basic
elements:
• a transmitter that takes information and converts it to

a signal
• a transmission medium over which the signal is
transmitted
• a receiver that receives the signal and converts it back
into usable information
For example, consider a radio broadcast: In this case the
broadcast tower is the transmitter, the radio is the receiver
and the transmission medium is free space.
Each of the elements of the telecommunications system
processes or carries an information-bearing signal. Each
of the elements contributes undesired noise, so one of the
figures of merit of a telecommunications system is its
signal-to-noise ratio.
Often telecommunication systems are two-way and a
single device acts as both a transmitter and receiver or
transceiver. For example, a mobile phone is a transceiver.
Telecommunication over a phone line is called point-to-
point communication because it is between one
transmitter and one receiver. Telecommunication through
radio broadcasts is called broadcast communication
because it is between one powerful transmitter and
numerous receivers.[2]
Analog or digital
Signals can either be analog or digital. In an analogue
signal, the signal is varied continuously with respect to
the information. In a digital signal, the information is
encoded as a set of discrete values (for example, 1s and
0s). During transmission, the information contained in
analog signals will be degraded by noise. Conversely,
unless the noise exceeds a certain threshold, the
information contained in digital signals will remain intact.
This represents a key advantage of digital signals over
analog signals.[3]
Networks
A collection of transmitters, receivers or transceivers that
communicate with each other is known as a network.
Digital networks may consist of one or more routers that
route data to the correct user. An analogue network may
consist of one or more switches that establish a
connection between two or more users. For both types of
network, a repeater may be necessary to amplify or
recreate the signal when it is being transmitted over long
distances. This is to combat attenuation that can render
the signal indistinguishable from noise.[4]
Channels
A channel is a division in a transmission medium so that
it can be used to send multiple independent streams of
data. For example, a radio station may broadcast at 96
MHz while another radio station may broadcast at 94.5
MHz. In this case the medium has been divided by
frequency and each channel received a separate frequency
to broadcast on. Alternatively one could allocate each
channel a recurring segment of time over which to
broadcast.[4]
The above usage of channel refers to analog
communications. In digital communications, a time slot in
a sequence of bits is a traditional time-division
multiplexing channel. More complex digital
telecommunications systems called statistical
multiplexing precedes the information with a channel
identifier, so bandwidth need not be allocated to silent
channels. Modern packet-switching, as in X.25 or the
Internet Protocol (IP) is a more generalized version of
statistical digital multiplexing.
Modulation
The shaping of a signal to convey information is known
as modulation. Modulation is a key concept in
telecommunications and is frequently used to impose the
information of one signal on another. Modulation is used
to represent a digital message as an analogue waveform.
This is known as keying and several keying techniques
exist—these include phase-shift keying, frequency-shift
keying, amplitude-shift keying and minimum-shift
keying. Bluetooth, for example, uses phase-shift keying
for exchanges between devices.[5]
However, more relevant to earlier discussion, modulation
is also used to boost the frequency of analogue signals.
This is because a raw signal is often not suitable for
transmission over long distances of free space due to its
low frequencies. Hence its information must be
superimposed on a higher frequency signal (known as a
carrier wave) before transmission. There are several
different modulation schemes available to achieve this—
some of the most basic being amplitude modulation and
frequency modulation. An example of this process is a
DJ's voice being superimposed on a 96 MHz carrier wave
using frequency modulation (the voice would then be
received on a radio as the channel “96 FM”).[6]
Society and telecommunication
Telecommunication is an important part of many modern
societies. In 2006, estimates place the telecommunication
industry's revenue at $1.2 trillion or just under three
percent of the gross world product.[7] Good
telecommunication infrastructure is widely acknowledged
as important for economic success in the modern world
on both the micro- and macroeconomic scale.
On the microeconomic scale, companies have used
telecommunication to help build global empires, this is
self-evident in the business of online retailer Amazon.com
but even the conventional retailer Wal-Mart has benefited
from superior telecommunication infrastructure compared
to its competitors.[8] In modern Western society, home
owners often use their telephone to organize many home
services ranging from pizza deliveries to electricians.
Even relatively poor communities have been noted to use
telecommunication to their advantage. In Bangladesh's
Narshingdi district, isolated villagers use cell phones to
speak directly to wholesalers and arrange a better price
for their goods. In Cote d'Ivoire coffee growers share
mobile phones to follow hourly variations in coffee prices
and sell at the best price.[9] With respect to the
macroeconomic scale, Lars-Hendrik Röller and Leonard
Waverman suggested a causal link between good
telecommunication infrastructure and economic growth in
2001.[10] Few dispute the existence of a correlation
although some argue it is wrong to view the relationship
as causal.[11]
Due to the economic benefits of good telecommunication
infrastructure there is increasing worry about the digital
divide. This stems from the fact that the world's
population does not have equal access to
telecommunication systems. A 2003 survey by the
International Telecommunication Union revealed that
roughly one-third of countries have less than one mobile
subscription for every 20 people and one-third of
countries have less than one fixed line subscription for
every 20 people. In terms of internet access, roughly half
of countries have less than one in 20 people with internet
access. From this information, as well as educational data,
the ITU was able to compile a Digital Access Index[12]
that measures the overall ability of citizens to access and
use information and communication technologies. Using
this measure, countries such as Sweden, Denmark and
Iceland receive the highest ranking while African
countries such as Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali receive
the lowest.[13]
History
Early telecommunications
A replica of one of Chappe's semaphore towers
Early forms of telecommunication include smoke signals
and drums. Drums were used by natives in Africa, New
Guinea and South America whereas smoke signals were
used by natives in North America and China. Contrary to
what one might think, these systems were often used to do
more than merely announce the presence of a camp.[14][15]
In 1792, a French engineer, Claude Chappe, built the first
fixed visual telegraphy (or semaphore) system between
Lille and Paris.[16] However semaphore as a
communication system suffered from the need for skilled
operators and expensive towers at intervals of ten to thirty
kilometers (six to nineteen miles). As a result of
competition from the electrical telegraph, the last
commercial line was abandoned in 1880.[17]
Telegraph and telephone
The first commercial electrical telegraph was constructed
by Sir Charles Wheatstone and Sir William Fothergill
Cooke and opened on April 9, 1839. Both Wheatstone
and Cooke viewed their device as "an improvement to the
[existing] electromagnetic telegraph" not as a new device.
[18]

Samuel Morse independently developed a version of the

electrical telegraph that he unsuccessfully demonstrated
on September 2, 1837. His code was an important
advance over Wheatstone's signaling method. The first
transatlantic telegraph cable was successfully completed
on July 27, 1866, allowing transatlantic
telecommunication for the first time.[19]
The conventional telephone was independently invented
by Alexander Graham Bell and by Elisha Gray in 1876.[20]
Antonio Meucci in 1849 invented a device that allowed
the electrical transmission of voice over a line. But
Meucci's device was of little practical value because it
relied upon the electrophonic effect and thus required
users to place the receiver in their mouth to “hear” what
was being said. The first commercial telephone services
were set-up in 1878 and 1879 on both sides of the
Atlantic in the cities of New Haven, Connecticut and
London.[21][22]
Radio and television
In 1832 James Lindsay gave a classroom demonstration
of wireless telegraphy to his students. By 1854 he was
able to demonstrate a transmission across the Firth of Tay
from Dundee, Scotland to Woodhaven, a distance of two
miles, using water as the transmission medium.[23] In
December 1901, Guglielmo Marconi established wireless
communication between St. John's, Newfoundland
(Canada) and Poldhu, Cornwall (England), earning him
the Nobel Prize in physics in 1909 (which he shared with
Karl Braun).[24] However, small-scale radio
communication had already been demonstrated in 1893
by Nikola Tesla in a presentation to the National Electric
Light Association.[25]
On March 25, 1925, John Logie Baird was able to
demonstrate the transmission of moving pictures at the
London department store Selfridges. Baird's device relied
upon the Nipkow disk and thus became known as the
mechanical television. It formed the basis of experimental
broadcasts done by the British Broadcasting Corporation
beginning September 30, 1929.[26] However, for most of
the twentieth century, televisions depended upon the
cathode ray tube invented by Karl Braun. The first version
of such a television to show promise was produced by
Philo Farnsworth and demonstrated to his family on
September 7, 1927. [27]
Computer networks and the Internet
On September 11, 1940, George Stibitz was able to
transmit problems using teletype to his complex number
calculator in New York and receive the computed results
back at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.[28] This
configuration of a centralized computer or mainframe
with remote dumb terminals remained popular throughout
the 1950s. However it was not until the 1960s that
researchers started to investigate packet switching—a
technology that would allow chunks of data to be sent to
different computers without first passing through a
centralized mainframe. A four-node network emerged on
December 5, 1969; this network would become
ARPANET, which by 1981 would consist of 213 nodes.
[29]

ARPANET's development centered on the Request for

Comment process and on April 7, 1969, RFC 1 was
published. This process is important because ARPANET
would eventually merge with other networks to form the
internet and many of the protocols the internet relies upon
today were specified through this process. In September
1981, RFC 791 introduced the Internet Protocol v4 (IPv4)
and RFC 793 introduced the Transmission Control
Protocol (TCP)—thus creating the TCP/IP protocol that
much of the internet relies upon today.
However not all important developments were made
through the Request for Comment process. Two popular
link protocols for local area networks (LANs) also
appeared in the 1970s. A patent for the token ring
protocol was filed by Olof Soderblom on October 29,
1974.[30] And a paper on the Ethernet protocol was
published by Robert Metcalfe and David Boggs in the
July 1976 issue of Communications of the ACM.[31] These
protocols are discussed in more detail in the next section.
Modern operation
Telephone
Optical fiber provides cheaper bandwidth for long
distance communication
In a conventional wire telephone system, the caller is
connected to the person he wants to talk to by the
switches at various exchanges. The switches form an
electrical connection between the two users and the
setting of these switches is determined electronically
when the caller dials the number. Once the connection is
made, the caller's voice is transformed to an electrical
signal using a small microphone in the caller's handset.
This electrical signal is then sent through the network to
the user at the other end where it transformed back into
sound by a small speaker in that person's handset. This
electrical connection works both ways, allowing the users
to converse.[32] The fixed-line telephones in most
residential homes are analog—that is, the speaker's voice
wave directly determines the signal's voltage. Although
short-distance calls may be handled from end-to-end as
analog signals, usually telephone service providers
transparently convert the signals to digital for switching
and transmission before converting them back to analogue
for reception. The advantage of this is that digitized voice
data can travel more cheaply, side-by-side with data from
the internet and can be perfectly reproduced in long
distance communication as opposed to analogue signals
which are inevitably impacted by noise.
Mobile phones have had a significant impact on telephone
networks. Mobile phone subscriptions now outnumber
fixed-line subscriptions in many markets. Sales of mobile
phones in 2005 totaled 816.6 million with that figure
being almost equally shared amongst the markets of
Asia/Pacific (204 million), Western Europe (164 million),
CEMEA (Central Europe, the Middle East and Africa)
(153.5 million), North America (148 million) and Latin
America (102 million).[33] In terms of new subscriptions
over the five years from 1999, Africa has outpaced other
markets with 58.2 percent growth.[34] Increasingly these
phones are being serviced by systems where the voice
content is transmitted digitally such as GSM or W-CDMA
with many markets choosing to depreciate analog systems
such as AMPS.[35]
There have also been dramatic changes in telephone
communication behind the scenes. Starting with the
operation of TAT-8 in 1988, the 1990s saw the
widespread adoption of systems based upon optic fibers.
The benefit of communicating with optic fibers is that
they offer a drastic increase in data capacity. TAT-8 itself
was able to carry ten times as many telephone calls as the
last copper cable laid at that time and today's optic fiber
cables are able to carry 25 times as many telephone calls
as TAT-8.[22] This drastic increase in data capacity is due
to several factors. First, optic fibers are physically much
smaller than competing technologies. Second, they do not
suffer from crosstalk, which means several hundred of
them can be easily bundled together in a single cable.[36]
Lastly, improvements in multiplexing have lead to an
exponential growth in the data capacity of a single fiber.
[37][38]

Assisting communication across these networks is a

protocol known as Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM)
that allows the side-by-side data transmission mentioned
in the first paragraph. The importance of the ATM
protocol is chiefly in its notion of establishing pathways
for data through the network and associating a traffic
contract with these pathways. The traffic contract is
essentially an agreement between the client and the
network about how the network is to handle the data, if
the network can not meet the conditions of the traffic
contract it does not accept the connection. This is
important because telephone calls can negotiate a contract
so as to guarantee themselves a constant bit rate,
something that will ensure a caller's voice is not delayed
in parts or cut-off completely.[39] There are competitors to
ATM, such as Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS),
that perform a similar task and are expected to supplant
ATM in the future.[40]
Radio and television

Digital television standards and their worldwide adoption

In a broadcast system a central high-powered broadcast
tower transmits a high-frequency electromagnetic wave to
numerous low-powered receivers. The high-frequency
wave sent by the tower is modulated with a signal
containing visual or audio information. The antenna of the
receiver is then tuned so as to pick up the high-frequency
wave and a demodulator is used to retrieve the signal
containing the visual or audio information. The broadcast
signal can be either analogue (signal is varied
continuously with respect to the information) or digital
(information is encoded as a set of discrete values).[41][42]
The broadcast media industry is at a critical turning point
in its development, with many countries moving from
analogue to digital broadcasts. This move is made
possible by the production of cheaper, faster and more
capable integrated circuits. The chief advantage of digital
broadcasts is that they prevent a number of complaints
with traditional analogue broadcasts. For television, this
includes the elimination of problems such as "snowy"
pictures, ghosting and other distortion. These occur
because of the nature of analogue transmission, which
means that perturbations due to noise will be evident in
the final output. Digital transmission overcomes this
problem because digital signals are reduced to binary data
upon reception and hence small perturbations do not
affect the final output. In a simplified example, if a binary
message 1011 was transmitted with signal amplitudes [1.0
0.0 1.0 1.0] and received with signal amplitudes [0.9 0.2
1.1 0.9] it would still decode to the binary message 1011
—a perfect reproduction of what was sent. From this
example, a problem with digital transmissions can also be
seen in that if the noise is great enough it can significantly
alter the decoded message. Using forward error
correction, a receiver can correct a handful of bit errors in
the resulting message but too much noise will lead to
incomprehensible output and hence a breakdown of the
transmission.[43]
In digital television broadcasting, there are three
competing standards that are likely to be adopted
worldwide. These are the ATSC, DVB and ISDB
standards and the adoption of these standards thus far is
presented in the captioned map. All three standards use
MPEG-2 for video compression. ATSC uses Dolby
Digital AC-3 for audio compression, ISDB uses
Advanced Audio Coding (MPEG-2 Part 7) and DVB has
no standard for audio compression but typically uses
MPEG-1 Part 3 Layer 2.[44] The choice of modulation also
varies between the schemes.
In digital audio broadcasting, standards are much more
unified with practically all countries choosing to adopt the
Digital Audio Broadcasting standard (also known as the
Eureka 147 standard). The exception being the United
States, which has chosen to adopt HD Radio. HD Radio,
unlike Eureka 147, is based upon a transmission method
known as in-band on-channel transmission—this allows
digital information to "piggyback" on normal AM or FM
analog transmissions, avoiding the bandwidth allocation
issues of Eureka 147 and therefore being strongly
advocated National Association of Broadcasters, who felt
there was a lack of new spectrum to allocate for the
Eureka 147 standard. In terms of audio compression,
DAB like DVB can use a variety of codecs but typically
uses MPEG-1 Part 3 Layer 2 and HD Radio uses High-
Definition Coding.
However, despite the pending switch to digital, analog
receivers still remain widespread. Analog television is
still transmitted in practically all countries. The United
States had hoped to end analog broadcasts by December
31, 2006, however this was pushed back to February 17,
2009.[45] For analog, there are three standards in use.
These are known as PAL, NTSC and SECAM.
For analog radio, the switch to digital is made more
difficult by the fact that analogue receivers cost a fraction
of the cost of digital receivers. For example while you can
get a good analog receiver for under US$20; a digital
receiver will set you back at least US$75. The choice of
modulation for analogue radio is typically between
amplitude modulation (AM) or frequency modulation
(FM). To achieve stereo playback, an amplitude
modulated subcarrier is used for stereo FM and
quadrature amplitude modulation is used for stereo AM or
C-QUAM.
The Internet

The OSI reference model

The Internet is a worldwide network of computers that
mostly operates over the public switched telephone
network. Any computer on the Internet has a unique IP
address that can be used by other computers to route
information to it. Hence any computer on the Internet can
communicate with any other computer and the Internet
can therefore be viewed as an exchange of messages
between computers.[46] An estimated 16.9 percent of the
world population has access to the Internet with the
highest participation (measured as percent of population)
in North America (69.7 percent), Oceania/Australia (53.5
percent) and Europe (38.9 percent).[47] In terms of
broadband access, countries such as Iceland (26.7
percent), South Korea (25.4 percent) and the Netherlands
(25.3 percent) lead the world.[48]
The Internet works in part because of protocols that
govern how the computers and routers communicate with
each other. The nature of computer network
communication lends itself to a layered approach where
individual protocols in the protocol stack run largely
independently of other protocols. This allows lower-level
protocols to be customized for the network situation while
not changing the way higher-level protocols operate. A
practical example of why this is important is because it
allows an Internet browser to run the same code
regardless of whether the computer it is running on is
connected to the Internet through an Ethernet or Wi-Fi
connection. Protocols are often talked about in terms of
their place in the OSI reference model—a model that
emerged in 1983 as the first step in a doomed attempt to
build a universally adopted networking protocol suite.[49]
The model itself is outlined in the picture to the right. It is
important to note that the Internet's protocol suite, like
many modern protocol suites, does not rigidly follow this
model but can still be talked about in the context of this
model.
For the Internet, the physical medium and data link
protocol can vary several times as packets travel between
client nodes. Though it is likely that the majority of the
distance traveled will be using the Asynchronous Transfer
Mode (ATM) data link protocol (or a modern equivalent)
across optical fiber this is in no way guaranteed. A
connection may also encounter data link protocols such as
Ethernet, Wi-Fi and the Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) and
physical media such as twisted-pair cables and free space.
At the network layer things become standardized with the
Internet Protocol (IP) being adopted for logical
addressing. For the world wide web, these “IP addresses”
are derived from the human readable form (for example,
72.14.207.99 is derived from www.google.com) using the
Domain Name System. At the moment the most widely
used version of the Internet Protocol is version four but a
move to version six is imminent. At the transport layer
most communication adopts either the Transmission
Control Protocol (TCP) or the User Datagram Protocol
(UDP). Broadly speaking, TCP is used when it is essential
every message sent is received by the other computer
where as UDP is used when it is merely desirable. With
TCP, packets are retransmitted if they are lost and placed
in order before they are presented to higher layers (this
ordering also allows duplicate packets to be eliminated).
With UDP, packets are not ordered or retransmitted if
lost. Both TCP and UDP packets carry port numbers with
them to specify what application or process the packet
should be handed to on the client's computer.[50] Because
certain application-level protocols use certain ports,
network administrators can restrict Internet access by
blocking or throttling traffic destined for a particular port.
Above the transport layer there are certain protocols that
loosely fit in the session and presentation layers and are
sometimes adopted, most notably the Secure Sockets
Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS)
protocols. These protocols ensure that the data transferred
between two parties remains completely confidential and
one or the other is in use when a padlock appears at the
bottom of your web browser. Another protocol that
loosely fits in the session and presentation layers is the
Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) most notably used to
stream QuickTime video.[51] Finally at the application
layer are many of the protocols Internet users would be
familiar with such as HTTP (web browsing), POP3 (e-
mail), FTP (file transfer) and IRC (Internet chat) but also
less common protocols such as BitTorrent (file sharing)
and ICQ (instant messaging).
Local area networks
A local area network
Despite the growth of the Internet, the characteristics of
local area networks (computer networks that run over at
most a few kilometers) remain distinct. This is because
networks on this scale do not require all the features
associated with larger-scale systems and are often more
cost-effective and speedier without them.
In the mid-1980s, several protocol suites emerged to fill
the gap between the data link and applications layer of the
OSI reference model. These were AppleTalk, IPX and
NetBIOS with the dominant protocol suite during the
early 1990s being IPX due to its popularity with MS-DOS
users. TCP/IP existed at this point but was typically only
used by large government and research facilities.[52]
However as the Internet grew in popularity and a larger
percentage of local area network traffic became Internet-
related, LANs gradually moved towards TCP/IP and
today networks mostly dedicated to TCP/IP traffic are
common. The move to TCP/IP was helped by
technologies such as DHCP introduced in RFC 2131 that
allowed TCP/IP clients to discover their own network
address—a functionality that came standard with the
AppleTalk/IPX/NetBIOS protocol suites.
However it is at the data link layer that modern local area
networks diverge from the Internet. Where as
Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) or Multiprotocol
Label Switching (MPLS) are typical data link protocols
for larger networks, Ethernet and Token Ring are typical
data link protocols for local area networks. The latter
LAN protocols differ from the former protocols in that
they are simpler (for example, they omit features such as
quality of service guarantees) and offer collision
prevention. Both of these differences allow for more
economic setups. For example, omitting quality of service
guarantees simplifies routers and the guarantees are not
really necessary for local area networks because they tend
not to carry real time communication (such as voice
communication). Including collision prevention allows
multiple clients (as opposed to just two) to share the same
cable again reducing costs.[53]
Despite Token Ring's modest popularity in the 1980s and
1990s, with the advent of the twenty-first century, the
majority of local area networks have now settled on
Ethernet. At the physical layer most Ethernet
implementations use copper twisted-pair cables (including
the common 10BASE-T networks). Some early
implementations used coaxial cables. And some
implementations (especially high speed ones) use optical
fibers. Optical fibers are also likely to feature prominently
in the forthcoming 10-gigabit Ethernet implementations.
[54]
Where optical fiber is used, the distinction must be
made between multi-mode fiber and single-mode fiber.
Multi-mode fiber can be thought of as thicker optical fiber
that is cheaper to manufacture but that suffers from less
usable bandwidth and greater attenuation (that is poorer
performance).
See also
• Information technology
• Radio

• Telephone

• Television

• Internet

Notes
1. ↑ Telecommunication, tele- and communication, New
Oxford American Dictionary (2nd ed.), 2005.
2. ↑ Simon Haykin, Communication Systems (New
York: John Wiley & Sons, 2001, ISBN
01471178691), pp. 1-3.
3. ↑ Ashok Ambardar, Analog and Digital Signal
Processing (Brooks/Cole Publishing, 1999, ISBN
053495409X), pp. 1-2.
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 ATIS Telecom Glossary 2000, ATIS
Committee T1A1 Performance and Signal Processing
(approved by the American National Standards
Institute). Retrieved June 15, 2007.
5. ↑ Haykin, 344-403.

6. ↑ Haykin, 88-126.

7. ↑ “Telecom Industry Revenue to Reach $1.2 Trillion

in 2006,” VoIP Magazine. Retrieved June 15, 2007.

8. ↑ Edward Lenert, “A Communication Theory

Perspective on Telecommunications Policy,” Journal

of Communication 48(4) (December 1998): 3-23.
9. ↑ Mireille Samaan, “The Effect of Income Inequality

on Mobile Phone Penetration,” Boston University

Honors Thesis. Retrieved June 15, 2007.
10. ↑ ”Telecommunications Infrastructure and Economic

Development: A Simultaneous Approach,” American

Economic Review 91(4): 909-923.
11. ↑ Ali Riaz, “The Role of Telecommunications in

Economic Growth: Proposal for an Alternative

Framework of Analysis,” Media, Culture & Society
19(4) (1997): 557-583.
12. ↑ Digital Access Index International

Telecommunication Union. Retrieved August 3,

2007.
13. ↑ World Telecommunication Development Report

2003: Access Indicators for the Information Society,

 International Telecommunication Union. Retrieved
August 3, 2007.
14. ↑ William Tomkins, Native American Smoke

Signals, The Inquiry Net. Retrieved August 3, 2007.

15. ↑ Talking Drums, Instrument Encyclopedia, Cultural

Heritage for Community Outreach, 1996. Retrieved

August 3, 2007.
16. ↑ Cédrick Chatenet, Les Télégraphes Chappe, l'Ecole

Centrale de Lyon, 2003 (in French). Retrieved

August 3, 2007.
17. ↑ “CCIT/ITU-T 50 Years of Excellence,”

International Telecommunication Union, 2006.

Retrieved August 3, 2007.
18. ↑ J. B. Calvert, “The Electromagnetic Telegraph:

Cooke and Wheatstone's Needle Telegraph.”

Retrieved August 3, 2007.
19. ↑ Bern Dibner, The Atlantic Cable, Burndy Library

Inc., 1959. Retrieved August 3, 2007.

20. ↑ Elisha Gray (1835-1901), Oberlin College

Archives, Electronic Oberlin Group, 2006. Retrieved

August 3, 2007.
21. ↑ “Connected Earth: The Telephone,”, BT, 2006.

Retrieved August 3, 2007.

22.0 22.1
22. ↑ AT&T: History: Milestones in AT&T
History. Retrieved August 3, 2007.
23. ↑ Macdonald Black, “James Bowman Lindsay,”
Dundee City Council, 1999. Retrieved August 3,
2007.
24. ↑ Ljubo Vujovic, Tesla Biography, Tesla Memorial

Society of New York. Retrieved August 3, 2007.

25. ↑ “Tesla's Radio Controlled Boat,” Twenty First

Century Books, 2007. Retrieved August 3, 2007.

26. ↑ The Pioneers, MZTV Museum of Television, 2006.

Retrieved August 3, 2007.

27. ↑ Neil Postman, “TIME 100: Philo Farnsworth,”

TIME (March 29, 1999). Retrieved August 3, 2007.

28. ↑ Kerry Redshaw, George Stlibetz. Retrieved August

3, 2007.
29. ↑ Katie Hafner, Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The

Origins Of The Internet (New York: Simon &

Schuster, 1998, ISBN 0685832674).
30. ↑ Olof Solderblom, United States Patent 4,293,948:

Data transmission system, October 1974. United

States Patent Office. Retrieved August 3, 2007.
31. ↑ Robert M. Metcalfe and David R. Boggs,

“Ethernet: Distributed Packet Switching for Local

Computer Networks,” Communications of the ACM
19(5) (July 1976): 395-404. Retrieved August 3,
2007.
32. ↑ Marshall Brain, Howstuffworks "Telephone

Design," Howstuffworks.com, 2006. Retrieved June

15, 2007.
33. ↑ “Gartner Says Top Six Vendors Drive Worldwide
Mobile Phone Sales to 21% Growth in 2005,”
Gartner Group, February 28, 2006. Retrieved August
3, 2007.
34. ↑ Victor Mbarika and Irene Mbarika, “Africa

Calling,” IEEE Spectrum (May 2006). Retrieved

August 3, 2007.
35. ↑ Ten Years of GSM in Australia, Australia

Telecommunications Association, 2003. Retrieved

August 3, 2007.
36. ↑ Saleem Bhatti, 1995, Optical fibre waveguide.

Retrieved August 3, 2007.

37. ↑ Fundamentals of DWDM Technology, CISCO

Systems, 2006. Retrieved August 3, 2007.

38. ↑ Mary Jander, “Report: DWDM No Match for

Sonet,” Light Reading (April 15, 2003). Retrieved

August 3, 2007.
39. ↑ William Stallings, 2004, Data and computer

Communications. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson

Prentice Hall, ISBN 0131833111), pp. 337-366.
40. ↑ John Dix, “MPLS is the future, but ATM hangs

on,” Network World (August 12, 2002). Retrieved

June 15, 2007.
41. ↑ Haykin, 1-3.

42. ↑ Howstuffworks "How Radio Works,"

Howstuffworks.com, 2006. Retrieved August 3,

2007.
43. ↑ Digital Television in Australia, Digital Television
News Australia, 2001. Retrieved August 3, 2007.
44. ↑ HDV Technology Handbook, Sony, 2004.

Retrieved August 3, 2007.

45. ↑ Consumer Corner FAQ, dtv.gov. Retrieved August

3, 2007.
46. ↑ Jeff Tyson, Howstuffworks "How Internet

Infrastructure Works," HowStuffWorks.com, 2007.

Retrieved August 3, 2007.
47. ↑ World Internet Users and Population Stats,

Internetworldstats.com. Retrieved August 3, 2007.

48. ↑ OECD Broadband Statistics, December 2005,

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and

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49. ↑ Charles M. Kozierok, 2005, History of the OSI

Reference Model, The TCP/IP Guide v3.0, Retrieved

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50. ↑ Stallings, 683-702.

51. ↑ Henning Schulzrinne, July 2006, RTP: About RTP

and the Audio-Video Transport Working. Retrieved

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52. ↑ Michael Martin, 2000, Understanding the Network

(The Networker’s Guide to AppleTalk, IPX, and

NetBIOS) (SAMS Publishing, ISBN 0735709777).
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53. ↑ Stallings, 500-526.
 54. ↑ Stallings, 514-516.
References
• Coleniewski, Lillian, and Kitty Wilson Jarrett. 2006.
Telecommunications Essentials: The Complete
Global Source, 2nd ed. Boston, MA: Addison-
Wesley Professional. ISBN 0321427610
• Dodd, Annabel Z. 2005. Essential Guide to
Telecommunications, 4th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ:
Prentice Hall. ISBN 0131487256
• Hill Associates, Inc. 2001. Telecommunications: A
Beginner's Guide. Columbus, OH: McGraw-Hill
Osborne Media. ISBN 0072193565
External links
All links retrieved August 3, 2007.
• International Telecommunication Union

• Federal Communications Commission. Retrieved

June 15, 2007.

• IEEE Communications Society

• ATIS Telecom Glossary

• Ericsson's Understanding Telecommunications at

archive.org (Ericsson removed the book from their

site in Sept. 2005)
• Telecommunication eBooks

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