Joaquim Dilco

Concepts of telecommunication
This chapter discusses the theory to telecommunications. The term
“telecommunication” is derived from the Greek stem “tele” meaning “at a distance” and
the word “communications” meaning “the science and practice of transmitting
information.” Telecommunications plays a vital role in international commerce and in
industrialized nations it is an accepted necessity. The advent of wireless services gives
an enormous impact on the growth of telecommunications networks. In industrialized
countries they are used increasingly for mobile business communications.
Telecommunications services follow several principles such as the telecommunications
networks are used to provide services to the users. A service requires the execution of a
series of programs by the originating and destination entities. The services are
decomposed into different layers by the initiating entity, where each layer undertakes a
specified portion of the overall service. This makes the services more manageable and
allows interoperability between vendors. The open systems interconnection (OSI)
reference model explains this layered architecture.

What are the types of telecommunications?

The cell phone, radio, television and data transmission through computers are part of the
telecommunications sector. Telecommunication is a part of the field of electrical
engineering whose purpose is to create distance communication for human
communication
Salvador

History of Telecommunications

The history of telecommunication began with the use of smoke signals and drums in

Africa, the Americas, and parts of Asia. In the 1790s, the first fixed semaphore systems
emerged in Europe; however, it was not until the 1830s that
electrical telecommunication systems started to appear.  Follow this advancement from
smoke signals to modern-day internet and mobile technology, understanding the events
that have shaped the world of telecommunications.

1-Early Era of Telecom:

Early telecommunications included smoke signals and drums. Talking drums were used
by natives in Africa, New Guinea, and South America, and smoke signals 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. In 1792, a French engineer,
Claude Chappe built the first visual telegraphy (or semaphore) system between Lille and
Paris. This was followed by a line from Strasbourg to Paris. In 1794, a Swedish
engineer, Abraham Edelcrantz built a quite different system from Stockholm to
Drottningholm. As opposed to Chappe's system which involved pulleys rotating beams
of wood, Edelcrantz's system relied only upon shutters and was therefore faster.
However, semaphore as a communication system suffered from the need for skilled
operators and expensive towers often at intervals of only ten to thirty kilometers (six to
nineteen miles). As a result, the last commercial line was abandoned in 1880.

2-Birth of Telegraph System:

Telecommunications began with the successful innovation of Samuel Morse's telegraph

system in 1844. For three years, the U.S. Post Office ran pioneering Washington to
Baltimore line. By that time other private telegraph companies had developed (the first
connected New York and Philadelphia) and were rapidly growing. Telegraph expansion
paralleled and aided the growth of America’s network of railroads. The latter provided a
prepared right of way, while the former offered vital communication links for the often
single-track networks that moved people and goods. The first coast-to-coast telegraph
line was opened in 1862 (seven years before rail links extended that far) and
immediately made money, demonstrating the value of telecommunications over great
distances.

3-Early Corporate Alliances:

Western Union, the first telecommunications monopoly, was formed as a regional

alliance of several smaller firms in 1856 and rapidly expanded, often following railway
lines. Just a year later the six largest telegraph companies developed a cartel, dividing
up the country and business among themselves. The Civil War demonstrated the value
of telegraph links (the Union was far better equipped than the Confederacy) and drove
up rates and company profits. Western Union took over some 15,000 miles of
government-built lines at the end of the war and became by far the largest company in
the field.

4-International Telegraph Systems:

Telegraph systems initially served only land routes, as it was presumed impossible to
lay lines underwater. After experiments running insulated telegraph lines under lakes
and across rivers, in 1858 an American-led consortium laid the first cable connecting
Britain and the United States, which eventually failed in few months. After a failed
attempt to lay a cable in 1865, success came in 1866; soon others were added. The
Pacific was not crossed until 1902 because of the great distances involved. The
availability of global telegraphy rapidly changed the face of business and government
affairs. The ability to "instantly" communicate had a great positive impact on business
and other human aspects of daily life.
Jesus simango

5-Birth of Telephone:

The success of the telegraph industry and rising electrical manufacturing businesses
formed the context for the telephone. The electric telephone was invented in the 1870s,
based on earlier work with harmonic (multi-signal) telegraphs. The first commercial
telephone services were set up in 1878 and 1879 on both sides of the Atlantic in the
cities of New Haven and London. The first telephone switchboard was placed in service
in New Haven, Connecticut, in early 1878, and demonstrated its greater efficiency over
individual lines between each customer. The first use of telephone numbers and
directories of telephone users appeared at about the same time. Telephone exchanges
(using many switchboards) appeared about two decades later.

The telephone was largely the creation of Alexander Graham Bell, who received his
first patent in March 1876. The early development of the telephone was fraught with
technical and financial problems. Alexander Graham Bell held the master patent for the
telephone that was needed for such services in both countries. The technology grew
quickly from this point, with inter-city lines being built and telephone exchanges in
every major city of the United States by the mid-1880s.

Restricted by crude technology to providing local service (initial iron wires rarely
extended 100 miles), telephone service developed slowly before the Bell patents expired
in 1893. Initial Bell business strategy focused on licensing use of its patents and selling
equipment to companies building systems in cities and towns, largely to serve business
and the wealthy.

6-Mechanically Automated Telephone:

A Kansas City undertaker, concerned that telephone operators were sending business to
his competitors, developed the first mechanically automated telephone switch in 1891.
The first automated switches began to appear around the turn of the century in major
cities—and would be used in smaller communities for decades. Copper telephone lines
were placed in use between Boston and New York, extending telephone service to 300
miles.  Around 1893, the country leading the world in telephones per 100 persons
(teledensity) was Sweden with 0.55 in the whole country but 4 in Stockholm (10,000
out of a total of 27,658 subscribers). This compares with 0.4 in the USA for that year.
Telephone service in Sweden developed through a variety of institutional forms: the
International Bell Telephone Company (a U.S. multinational), town and village co-
operatives, the General Telephone Company of Stockholm (a Swedish private
company), and the Swedish Telegraph Department (part of the Swedish government).
Since Stockholm consists of islands, telephone service offered relatively large
advantages but had to use submarine cables extensively. Competition between Bell
Telephone and General Telephone, and later between General Telephone and the
Swedish Telegraph Dept., was intense.

In 1893, the U.S. was considerably behind Sweden, New Zealand, Switzerland, and
Norway in teledensity. The U.S. rose to world leadership in teledensity with the rise of
many independent telephone companies after the Bell patents expired in 1893 and 1894.

7-20th Century Developments in Telecom:

By 1904 there were over three million phones in the US, still connected by manual
switchboard exchanges. By 1914, the U.S. was the world leader in teledensity and had
more than twice the teledensity of Sweden, New Zealand, Switzerland, and Norway.
The relatively good performance of the U.S. occurred despite competing telephone
networks not interconnecting.

For the next half-century, the network behind the telephone grew progressively larger
and much more efficient, and after the rotary dial was added the instrument itself
changed little until touch-tone signaling started replacing the rotary dial in the 1960s.
8-Transatlantic Voice Communications:

Despite all these developments, transatlantic voice communication remained impossible

for customers until January 7, 1927, when a connection was established using radio.
However, no cable connection existed until TAT-1 was inaugurated on September 25,
1956, providing 36 telephone circuits. Transcontinental telephone service became
possible only around 1915 by the use of amplifiers based on Lee De Forest's "Audion"
vacuum tube.

9-Coaxial Cable and Microwave Links:

Improved technology would begin to change the face of telecommunications after 1945.
Paced by wartime needs and spending, Bell Labs and other researchers produced
coaxial cable and microwave links that were first used commercially in the years after
the war. No longer was it necessary to build an expensive telecommunication network
using copper wires. Microwave links required the use of many antenna towers— and a
license to use the high-frequency spectrum—but this was less expensive than a
traditional wired network. Coaxial cable offered the broadband capacity needed to
transmit thousands of telephone calls or full-motion video.

Joao estevao

10-Satellite Communications:

Development of satellite communication was first hinted at in a 1945 article by Arthur

C. Clarke in which he postulated a geostationary orbit 22,300 miles high that would
keep a satellite above the same part of Earth. Pushed by the cold war missile race, the
world's first artificial satellite came just 12 years later as the Soviet Union launched
Sputnik into a low Earth orbit in October 1957. Early military satellite communications
followed the same low-orbit path until the first commercial geostationary satellites
appeared in the 1970s.
11-Mobile Phones:

The history of mobile phones can be traced back to two-way radios permanently
installed in vehicles such as taxicabs, police cruisers, railroad trains, and the like. Later
versions such as the so-called transportable or "bag phones" were equipped with a
cigarette lighter plug so that they could also be carried, and thus could be used as either
mobile two-way radios or as portable phones by being patched into the telephone
network.

Bell Labs developed the notion of "cellular" systems allowing for frequency reuse (and
thus far greater capacity) and developed it through the 1970s. On April 3, 1973,
Motorola manager Martin Cooper placed a cellular phone call (in front of reporters) to
Dr. Joel S. Engel, head of research at AT&T's Bell Labs. This began the era of the
handheld cellular mobile phone. Meanwhile, the 1956 inauguration of the TAT-1 cable
and later international direct dialing were important steps in knitting together the
various continental telephone networks into a global network. The FCC approved the
operation of an analog cellular mobile telephone system in 1982, sparking a new growth
sector.

12Cable Television Companies:

Cable television companies began to use their fast-developing cable networks, with
ducting under the streets of the United Kingdom, in the late 1980s, to provide telephony
services in association with major telephone companies. One of the early cable
operators in the UK, Cable London, connected its first cable telephone customer in
about 1990.

13- Digital Technology:

Digital technology first appeared in American telecommunications with AT&T's

introduction of its T1 Carrier System in 1962. A T1 line offered far more capacity and a
cleaner (less noisy) signal. Soon digital telephone switches appeared, allowing for more
flexible network design and operation. But the most sweeping change came with the
installation of fiber-optic cables to carry voice, data, and video signals. The huge
carrying capacity of fiber—constantly rose with further technical improvements—
finally placed telecommunication networks well ahead of projected growth (and planted
the seeds for disaster in the early 2000s).

14The 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. 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, between the University of California, Los Angeles, the
Stanford Research Institute, the University of Utah, and the University of California,
Santa Barbara. This network would become ARPANET, which by 1981 would consist
of 213 nodes. In June 1973, the first non-US node was added to the network belonging
to Norway's NORSAR project. This was shortly followed by a node in London.

Two popular link protocols for local area networks (LANs) also appeared in the 1970s.
Internet access became widespread late in the century, using the old telephone and
television networks. The Internet, based on government networks dating back to 1969,
became a widely used public network in 1995. Development of the World Wide Web
and the graphic user interface making it possible opened up a wealth of expanding
information resources and growing public acceptance. By the early 2000s, more than
half of American households were connected to the Internet, a slowly growing number
of them linked by broadband connections. Projections of Internet growth sparked
bullish plans for the underlying telecommunication services and manufacturing that
made the Web possible. Many of those projections were wide of reality.

15-Internet Protocol (IP) Telephony:

Internet Protocol (IP) telephony (also known as 'Internet telephony') is a service based
on the Voice over IP communication protocol (VoIP), a disruptive technology that is
rapidly gaining ground against traditional telephone network technologies. In Japan and
South Korea, up to 10% of subscribers switched to this type of telephone service as of
January 2005.

IP telephony uses a broadband Internet connection to transmit conversations as data

packets. In addition to replacing the traditional Plain Old Telephone Service POTS
system, IP telephony is also competing with mobile phone networks by offering free or
lower-cost connections via WiFi hotspots. VoIP is also used on private wireless
networks which may or may not have a connection to the outside telephone network.