TABLE OF CONTENTS Most of what we have discussed to date has been regarding the technologies used to handle the wireless communications. The LAN architectures led us close to other issues such as the protocols used to support the high-speed and broadband communications needs for the future. It is a natural propensity to discuss the hardware components used to produce products and services. However, many other innovations are taking place all around the hardware. These innovations include the use of communications protocols to handle the preparation and delivery of the data communications. Note that the issue hangs on data delivery. The use of data is a generic statement because we use digital communications that turns voice and data into strings of ones and zeros for transmission. This means that voice is data and data is too! However, we must also look at the other side of this coin. Voice is non-granular if we add broadband communications, we do not get better quality for voice because the 64-Kbps pulse coded modulation (PCM) voice stream is all we will ever need. Indeed, 64 Kbps is overkill to handle a single voice call. Thus, we concentrate on broadband communications to move large amounts of data, multimedia, and video capabilities rather than voice. Having said that, the next step is to look at the innovations of our data protocols to support the high-speed communications needs for the future.
