Section 1.1: Historic View of Telecommunications

Not long ago, the term telecommunications implied voice communications technology. But today, this term is used to address both voice and data technology. As networks expand to carry all forms of information, the term telecommunications has evolved to include voice, video, data, multimedia, and high-fidelity audio.

We are living during a time of technological evolution. Many of the technological innovations from 10 years ago are just now finding their way into our daily lives. To understand the evolution of this industry, we need to first examine the history of the data and voice industries.

You will find is that many of the contributions made to data communications have been used in voice communications as well. Likewise, many of the contributions made by the telephony industry have been applied to the data industry as well. Today, these two industries have combined, making it difficult to separate the two.

In this section, we will discuss first data communications history and then examine the evolution of the telephone industry. Appendix A provides a chronological view of all of the events in both the computer and telephone industries.