Telecommunications

The telecommunications blueprint for a single Europe after 1992 is examined. This `green paper' is an ambitious three-year-old document in which the European Community's Commission calls for a Western-Europe-wide telecommunications infrastructure based on the integrated-services digital network (ISDN) and other digital communication links. The progress that has been made toward this goal is assessed, showing that progress toward opening national markets and establishing an infrastructure varies greatly from country to country. The highly variable quality of network services throughout Europe presents a further obstacle to unification. Nevertheless, the national segments of a trans-European ISDN system are beginning to emerge, and work on the specific technologies, standards, and regulations for cross-border telecommunications systems are advancing     

The impact of US-Japan telecommunications trade upon Japanese Information Infrastructure development

This article analyzes the impact of US-Japan telecommunications trade upon the development of the Japanese Information Infrastructure. The current telecommunications trade conflict between the two countries does not pay attention to an essential aspect; technology standards, arguing only national, self-centered, and short-range perspectives on bilateral trade. This article will open up a global perspective regarding bilateral trade, telecommunications infrastructure development, and government/business relationship. Our conceptual framework and empirical evidence will serve as a basis for not only the underlying essence of the bilateral telecommunications trade dispute, but also for discussing the nature of government/business relationships in the global information technology era.     

Standards initiatives for Emergency Telecommunications Service(ETS)

This article presents the functional requirements, features, and objectives for the Emergency Telecommunications Service (ETS) in newly emerging telecommunication networks. The ETS is an extension of the International Emergency Preference Scheme (IEPS) of ITU-T Recommendation E.106 and includes additional provisions for multimedia services through a packet-based telecommunications environment. Efforts are underway in the national standards bodies and International organizations to identify, establish, and apply a comprehensive family of ETS standards for the next generation of telecommunication services, which are expected to be a blend of new packet technology with traditional circuit-based infrastructure     

Coordinating global standards and market demands

The telecommunications infrastructure is becoming more commonly recognized as a key factor in socioeconomic development, and as an important business requirement to successfully compete in the global market. The need for highly integrated, complex, effective solutions, in a timely manner, has stimulated changes in the standards setting environment. These changes include rapid standards development, effective reorganization, and the implementation of electronic data handling systems. This overview of the global standards environment provides an illustration of the recent changes in the international, regional, and national arenas. The need for conformity of communication products with these global standards has never been greater. This is mandated by the need for greater production quantities to justify costly complex system development, as well as a ubiquitous solution for a worldwide network. The trend that telecommunications systems are becoming larger, more sophisticated, and more integrated makes the development of the systems and standards more difficult and time consuming. This is providing a challenge to the standards community, since they need to develop effective standards rapidly     

Integrated Broad-Band Communication Systems in Belgium

Belgian politicians, the National Telecommunications Administration (RTT), and the telecommunication industry in general fully realize the major economic, industrial, and social importance of an advanced telecommunications infrastructure for the future of the country. A national effort is therefore underway. This paper describes the specific Belgian telecommunications environment, its development towards an ISDN infrastructure, and evolution towards the integration of telecommunication and distribution services into a uniform broad-band communication network. The present network structures for both telecommunication and distribution services are briefly discussed in this paper. Furthermore, plans and experiments in the area of ISDN are also described. Explanations related to the basic concepts of a national integrated broad-band communication network and possible architectures for a demonstration project are given.     

The missing link and Vision 2000 [telecommunication services]

Indonesia recognizes telecommunications as essential for national development and to maintain competitiveness in the global economy. Its goal is a well-developed telecommunications infrastructure that provides high-quality service at affordable rates, easily accessible by everyone-including people in rural areas     

Visionen für den Telekom-Markt in Österreich

In a European comparison, liberalization in Austria has given the small country a wide range of providers and brought hard competition to the telecom operators. Today information technology and telecommunications have long been an inseparable unity, and globally the ICT branch has become a key factor in guaranteeing high quality standards for Austria as a place to do business. In this scenario we need political incentives for infrastructure investments and national solidarity for broadband by politics, industry and research, to be able to keep step with the speed of international development.     

Evolution of telecommunications in Russia

The current status of Russia's telecommunications infrastructure does not correspond to the country's increasing demands. The creation of a commercial digital overlay network is apparently the only possible solution to provide modern telecommunications services. This article describes the following aspects of the evolution of telecommunications in Russia: a classification of the main specific features of the existing telecommunications networks; an analysis of the telecommunications statistics and forecasting of the main characteristics; likely future scenarios of the evolving telecommunications system; and the main telecommunications projects that will be carried out in the nearest future. Until now, the public switched telephone network (PSTN), a unique system providing basic dialogue services (speech, data transmission, etc.), was the single solution to provide national telecommunications. For this reason, we first describe the main features of the Russian national PSTN     

Evolving access networks: a European perspective

The diversity of telecommunications markets and access network infrastructure among the countries of Europe is a complicating factor in the development of effective standards for Europe's future access networks. The need for evolving access networks to make efficient use of a wide variety of existing infrastructure may at times conflict with the long-term requirement for a stable platform of self-consistent standards which allow future-proof evolution. In light of these constraints, the authors summarize progress made in the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) toward standards for future access networks     

Evolution of telecommunication in eastern Europe

New global trends in telecommunications technology and liberalization will force dramatic changes in the national telecommunications of the East European countries. Some of them are described in this article. Mainly the technical issues of shaping telecommunication systems evolution in the region are considered. The major trends in regional telecommunication networks evolution-deregulation, new end user demands, and technological innovations are described first . Next, we deal with today's network structure. Finally, we describe the possible transformation of the network infrastructure in the near future.     

Securing a global village and its resources

In an international economy and social infrastructure that is growing more dependent everyday on its communications networks, more attention must be placed on the security and integrity of the components and interfaces of those critical structures. This article describes and hopefully help to further set the stage for the realization of effective risk based baseline security level of protection and resilience for the common intelligence SS7 signaling networks linking much of the existing telecommunications and future public networking superhighways. This article is also intended to further support the unfolding of globally harmonized standards of due care on security, e.g., the British Standards Institute, BSI, Code of Practice for Information Security Management     

Telecom glen-online to the world

The Highlands and Islands of Scotland represent about one-sixth of the land mass of Britain, but are inhabited by less than 1% of the British population. Industry struggles but the introduction of a modern telecommunications infrastructure is helping to revitalise the economy. The area is at present the only European rural area to have a supply-led advanced telecoms network, up to full ISDN standards. Advantages and implementation of the system are also described     

Supplier quality improvement-the key to long-term qualityrelationships

A vital and large part of maintaining high national telecommunications standards is the success of telecommunications suppliers in providing quality products and services for the nation's telecommunications network. A supplier quality improvement program has been developed to address this objective. The program stresses long-term relationships between the telephone companies and their suppliers with an emphasis on customer-supplier teamwork. The goal of this teamwork is the evolution of suppliers who consistently bring quality products and services to the network and who continually strive to improve their operations. The responsibilities of both customers and suppliers is the initiation and implementation of a supplier quality improvement program are described     

Implementing OSI agent/managers for TMN

The telecommunications management network (TMN) architecture defines a framework for the management of telecommunications networks and services. It is based on a set of TMN standards developed by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU-T), and is finding increased interest in the telecommunications industry, where rapid development of services and open architectures are in demand. Open systems interconnection (OSI) agent/managers as defined by the OSI systems management standards play a major role in the TMN architecture. However, the complexity of these standards, make the implementation of agent/managers and thus TMN systems a challenging task; methodologies and tools to ease the task of building agent/managers are needed. This article discusses the key difficulties in building OSI agent/managers and presents an architecture and a toolkit that can overcome them. The toolkit automates the generation of code that conforms to TMN and OSI standards, allowing the implementor to focus on the implementation of agent and manager specific components using the facilities provided by the toolkit     

New concept and hierarchy for telecommunications standards

The factors leading to the formulation of standards to meet the rapid expansion of telecommunications in China are discussed. The categories chosen for the standards and their use in managing the deployment of telecommunications networks in China are described. The standards development approach used creates standards that involve the adoption of a layered approach to networking and the definition of sets of open standards for each of these layers. The resulting integrated network is divided into three layers: the bearer layer, support layer, and service layer. To provide this layered approach, four types of telecommunications standards, appropriate to the functional needs of organizations using the standards, have been developed. The four functional types are: telecommunications basic technical standards, engineering and construction standards, operations and maintenance standards, and telecommunications general standards     

Overview of the GSM system and protocol architecture

The global system for mobile telecommunications (GSM), which provides terminal mobility, with personal mobility provided through the insertion of a subscriber identity module (SIM) into the GSM network, is discussed. Cellular mobile communications, the cellular network infrastructure, and the specification of network databases and standards are described. The GSMs, numbering plan, radio channel structure, mobility management, call routing and signaling, protocol layering architecture, signaling transport protocols, and paging messaging systems are also described     

Standards make the GIH possible

Technical telecommunications standards form the foundations of the global information highway (GIH). Yet an understanding of the taxonomy of technical standards, the value and relationship of the different fora developing standards, even the need for standards at all, remain elusive. With the global effect of the GIH, technical telecommunications standards are no longer a minor aspect of society. The International Telecommunications Union, as the leading telecommunications standards-making authority, in conjunction with the many other fora developing and contributing to telecommunications standards, needs to offer more than technical standards direction. The telecommunications standards-making community should add its own more considered view of the GIH to the current commentary from publications, politicians, and pundits     

中国适当调整电信资费结构和标准

通信作为社会的基础设施和国民经济的先行产业，是社会生产力的重要组成部分，与国计民生密切相关随着我国科学技术的进步和电信事业的发展，以及信息化时代人们生活方式的改变，沿用了几址年的电信资费结构和标准不仅心合理、而且在一定程度上制约了业务的使用，导致发展不平衡，管理困难等种种弊病。     

Information policy in the developing world: The infrastructure constraint

This article outlines the domestic telecommunications infrastructure constraint on information flow within and into developing countries. It then briefly reviews some of the development related costs of inadequate telecommunications facilities and outlines prominent reasons for inadequate domestic telecommunications infrastructure relative to existing demands. In so doing, the hypothesis is suggested that government information policies in those countries with more centrally planned economies generally tend to lead to the provision of lower levels of two-way communication infrastructure than is the case in more free market oriented economies.     

Telecommunications markets, industry, and infrastructure in Korea

Following the successful deployment of basic telecommunications networks and services in the 1970s and 1980s, Korea's telecommunications sector has undergone significant environmental and technical changes. Among these are the introduction of competition in the telecommunications market, the allowance of foreign ownership of telecommunication services, and the deployment of new networks and services, all within a new legal framework. As demands for more diversified and high-quality telecommunications increase, Korea is now preparing for a major communication infrastructure that can serve as a common network foundation. Named the Korea Information Infrastructure, it is planned to provide a new network foundation that will serve as the core of the information society in the 21st century. This article describes the current status of and future perspectives on the Korean telecommunications markets, industry, and infrastructure