Telecommunications Industry

Telecommunications Industry

Telecommunications means mediated communications (any communication that has a technology between the sender and receiver). The history of telecommunications began with drums in Africa, were complex messages were sent over vast distances. Smoke signals were also amongst the first methods to communicate visual messages over long distances. This messages were conveyed by intermittent clouds of smoke.  In 1451, the printing press was invented, which replaced hand manual-writing, being a one to many motor communications. In the 1790s, the first telegraphy system with a 136-line between Leon and Paris. In 1847, the Telegraph was created which can read electrical signals. Soon those wires extended across the US, and transatlantic telegraph cable runs 2000 miles under the ocean. The telephone, invented in 1876, made telecommunications personal by transmitting multiple voices over shared party-lines. In 1880 Graham Bell came up with the first wireless phone call and lead to today’s fiber-optics.

An icon of telecommunications is the Eiffel Tower[70] is named after Gustave Eiffel, was constructed as the entrance to the 1889 World’s Fair and is a global cultural icon of France and one of the most recognizable structures in the world. Construction began in 1887, the base pillars are oriented with the four points of the compass. 132 workers assembled 18,000 parts on site in over 2 years. Until 1909, the tower was lit by gaslights. Today it is illuminated by 336 spotlights. It is a vital communications link with 120 antennae. The tower has been used for making radio transmissions since the beginning of the 20th century. Today, radio and digital television signals are transmitted from the Eiffel Tower.  

WW2 saw also huge advances in telecommunications, such as the handy talky that was created to communicate to other radio wave devices. Before 1957, computers only worked on one task at a time. This is called Batch Processing. This was quite ineffective. With computers getting bigger and bigger, there had to be stored in special cool junks. Programming at that time meant a lot of manual work. And a direct connection had to be installed so the developers can work directly on the computers. At the same time, the idea of time sharing came up. This is the first concept in computer technology to share the processing power of one computer with multiple users. The Arpanet’s development began in 1956. Universities were generally quite cautioned about sharing the computers. Therefore, small computers were put in front of the main frame. This computer took over control of the Network activities, while the mainframe was in charge of the initialization of programs in data files.

The Smart Phone began itself as a mobile phone is the piece of technology that has had the biggest influence on society. The true origin of modern mobile phones were handheld radio transceivers in the WW2. However, this supported only a limited number of simultaneous conversations and these things consumed a hell lot of power. In 1965, the technology advanced with AT&T giving the world the improved mobile phone service or IMTS. The first hand-held mobile phone was invented in 1973 by Martin Cooper in Motorola. It was a prototype that offered 30 minutes of prototype and took 10 hours to recharge. These phones made use of G Networks. The first Smart Phone was the IBM Simon which function as a mobile phone, a pager and a fax machine. It also had a calendar, address book, clock, calculator, notebook, e-mail functionality and a touch screen with keyword. SMS kicked off in 1992 and full mobile capabilities were introduced in 1999. 3G Network was then introduced and a few years later Smart Phones were taken further with a black box device which was the 5810. In 2007, Apple’s introduction of the Smart Phone changed things forever. They are used for everything between Surfing the Web, playing videogames, watching maps and playing videos. Television is the most important means of distributing information on a global basis. Before satellite, TV signals did not go very far. The signals only travelling straight lines, so they will quickly trail off. Phone calls to far places were also a problem. Setting up long cables over long distances or underwater is difficult and expensive. A Satellite is an object that orbits other object. With satellites, TV signals and phone-calls are sent upward to a satellite that almost instantly sends a signals back down to different locations back down to Earth. During the Cold War, on October 4th 1957 the Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite called: Sputnik 1[71]. Four months later, the US launched Explorer 1[72] into orbit. A communication for navigation. GPS uses a satellite as a reference point to calculate geographical positions. GPS has been used to pinpoint any ship, or submarine in the Ocean, and to even measure mount Everest. Today there are around 3000 satellites operating orbit today. The large amount of satellite today creates space junk, space debris and trash.              

By the year 2020, an entire generation will have grown up in a primarily digital world. Computers, the Internet, mobile phones, texting, social networking – all will be second nature to them. More than half of the employees at bigger corporations will work on virtual project groups. The six major disruptions that will drive the most change in telecommunications by 2020 are:

1.     Integration: The content contest Connectivity is capturing an ever-smaller proportion of the information value chain, while content, service and product deliverers capture ever-more.

2.     IoT: The traffic explosion This internet of things, or Thingification, will add billions if not trillions of new connected data sources globally by 2020.

3.     Mobility: The great wireless migration Global growth of mobile connectivity is far outpacing hardline connectivity. This makes sense, as most growth is occurring in the developing world and amongst poorer populations.

4.     Saturation: The search for growth As they retire, boomers will enter retirement communities and assisted living facilities which are fully digitized in order to be as efficient as possible.

5.     Security: The network is the threat As custodians of the networks, carriers play a pivotal role in fighting the new threats that are emerging. Customers will begin to expect, then demand, more proactive protection from the entire internet value chain, and carriers will be expected to support these expectations with a range of technical and operational innovations.

6.     Ascension: Skynet finally gets real These space-, balloon-, or drone-based systems will provide high-quality broadband access to anywhere and everywhere in the world, they’ll do it affordably, and they’ll likely start arriving around 2020. Stay tuned, the Telecommunications Revolution has just begun.