OVERVIEW

Alexander Graham Bell is credited with inventing the telephone sometime after Samuel B. Morse came up with the telegraph key and code, making smoke signals obsolete technology. Somewhere along the way, in the more recent past, computers learned to talk to one another over telephone lines. And then along came the Internet.

That s almost enough history for practitioners. However, a perspective on the past is well worth a quick read because understanding some of the history, especially since 1982, provides insight into the changes the Telecom industry has undergone and how that has, or will impact media and entertainment industry operations in the future.

Keeping our focus on practical considerations it makes sense to start somewhere in the early part of the past century. After all, radio and telephones came from similar inventive roots and had electrical or electronics in common. It s also instructive to observe that the two parted ways when digital electronics went solid state. With digital electronics initially the switching transistor devices could count and keep track of items or service transactions, calculate, or measure interesting, valuable operational and accounting characteristics of the business.

Someone figured out how to convert an analog signal into digital form, and the telephone world went for it with a vengeance. On the other hand, radio and television receivers didn t warm to digital techniques until well after integrated circuits with divide and multiply capability became cost effective for use in tuners. Other similar events along the way could be mentioned, but suffice it...