N-GEN Communications Web-based Seminars ©NGCS

Seminar - An Overview of Communications Technologies

Module 2 - Data Communications Basics and Legacy Technologies                                                Slide 41 of 45 _________________                                                                                  __________

                                   Next-Generation Technologies - Offering Solution
                                      to the Legacy and Mature Technologies Limitations

                                        Convergence Technologies

                                        Compression Technologies

                                        Cable Technologies

                                        Wireless Technologies

_________________                                                                                  __________

Last year (2002) or so telecommunications carriers have shied away from the convergence strategy. The term convergence has been successful in the telecommunications industry as compared to its use in the media convergence. Bell Canada, Telus and some U.S. telecommunications carriers are moving away from convergence. The enterprise networks are embracing the voice and data networks convergence. Convergence and compression technologies go hand in hand and have evolved to transmit multi-media information. The cable industry has upgraded its network and developed new technologies to transmit Data and voice (bi-directional) over its network. The wireless industry is hard pressed to come up with technologies to transmit images and data at a high speed.

Convergence Technologies - International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) have developed a number of technologies (H.323, SIP, MGCP and Megaco) for audio, video and data communications via the Internet (TCP / IP) protocol. According to Nortel Networks (July 9, 2003) - 31 % of its enterprise customers have converged their voice and data networks and another 61% plan to do so in the next five years.

Compression Technologies - Voice and video encoding and compression (H - series for video applications and G - series for audio applications) are part of the convergence technologies.

Cable Technologies - The cable industry is providing high speed Internet connection to customers via Cable Modem and venturing into VOIP over cable networks.

Wireless Technologies - Current wireless protocols are designed to transfer small amounts of text, such as e-mail and data, such as stock quotes on the Internet. New initiatives have been taken by the industry to ensure that a solid, reliable technology is made available for high wireless data transmission. Another area in wireless communications is the wireless LANs. The Institution of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has developed 802 standards to transmit data at 54 M bps (802.11g) on a wireless LAN.
Application - Down loading high-quality digital camera images or colour images to a kiosk or printer, down loading video games to wireless phones.