World Telecommunication Day 1999 |
IHT October 11, 1999 |
Using telecommunications for business in today's world
means using the Internet - not just the Web and e-mail, the best-known ways of
sending and receiving information over the global ''network of networks,'' but
also voice communications, access to software applications and much more.
Oct. 11, 1999 The Full Story
When it comes to telecommunications services, the
somewhat overused concept of ''convergence'' no longer applies only to the
supporting network technologies or the applications being carried over them.
Increasingly, the convergence idea also defines the types of companies that are
becoming major players in providing communications services and supporting the
networks that carry them.
Oct. 11, 1999 The Full Story
Woody Allen humorously parodied the quest for constant
connectivity a couple of decades ago with a character who spent an entire movie
calling his answering service to give them the phone number where he could be
reached. Today's business people, particularly those who travel regularly, might
fail to see the humor as they struggle to cope with an growing onslaught of
messages and formats - voice mail, e-mail, fax, SMS (short message service) -
from wherever they happen to be.
Oct. 11, 1999 The Full Story
The rapid rise of the Internet has made its native
protocol the dominant network protocol in use, eclipsing - though certainly not
eliminating - the vendor-specific and proprietary protocols that make up the
backbone of many corporate network infrastructures. Corporate networks based on
Internet Protocol (IP) are increasingly attractive to companies. Two
applications in particular, Virtual Private Networks and Internet telephony
(also known as voice over IP), offer potentially tremendous cost savings for
today's geographically distributed companies.
Oct. 11, 1999 The Full Story
Taking care of customers is as old as commerce itself,
but information technology offers new ways of going about it. Customer
Relationship Management, or CRM, is one of the hottest areas for growth in
business technology.
Oct. 11, 1999 The Full Story
For the biggest of the big in the telecommunications
service provider and computer platform sectors, the approach to electronic
commerce support for large business concerns can be adequately summed up with a
universal motto: ''We'll take you there.''
Oct. 11, 1999 The Full Story
Establishing some kind of electronic commerce strategy
has become an absolute priority for nearly all types of businesses. But recent
studies show that the cost of just creating and maintaining a presence on the
Internet can be prohibitive at times, and that the costs associated with
ensuring security and reliability on a site make the price of e-commerce
skyrocket even higher.
Oct. 11, 1999 The Full Story
With land-based mobile phone networks - particularly GSM
networks - covering more and more locations around the world, is there a future
for satellite mobile communications?
Oct. 11, 1999 The Full Story
When mechanical engineers at Fisher Controls
International Inc. in Iowa wanted to discuss modifications to a new design with
their counterparts in Singapore, they came across a number of communication
problems.
Oct. 11, 1999 The Full Story
If there is a single reason why the task of creating and
maintaining corporate communications networks is increasingly moving outside of
the corporations themselves and into the hands of public network carriers, it is
probably the Internet. More broadly, it is the vast amount of data traffic that
most corporate networks now support and transport - a factor that makes them far
more complex and far more difficult for the corporations themselves to maintain.
Oct. 11, 1999 The Full Story
The telecommunications service provider sector has
hosting fever. In the past year alone, literally dozens of major communications
carriers have announced applications-hosting initiatives designed to draw more
corporate-level functions off of their customers' networks and onto their own.
The phenomenon could potentially encompass all kinds of corporate network
functions.
Oct. 11, 1999 The Full Story
Computers convert text into speech using speech
synthesis. The disembodied voices in rental cars and elevators are prerecorded
digital samples, not synthesized. Phone directory services use sampled voice
fragments pieced together on the fly.
Oct. 11, 1999 The Full Story
In some ways, it's a done deal: In the near future,
every roving employee, freelancer or contract worker who needs to keep in touch
with the home office while on the road is going to be able to do so with a
handheld wireless computing device.
Oct. 11, 1999 The Full Story
While inhabitants of the small and medium-sized business
sector ponder the attributes of their various network connectivity options -
including cable modems, digital subscriber lines, T-1/E-1 connections and fiber
- a new alternative for gaining higher-speed access to data networks like the
Internet has been steadily beaming its way into the public consciousness:
broadband wireless.
Oct. 11, 1999 The Full Story
By the end of 2005, around 500 million mobile terminals
will be in use around the world, each of which poses a serious potential threat
to public and private fixed and mobile networks.
Oct. 11, 1999 The Full Story
Once upon a time, the capacity of voice-centric
telecommunications networks grew in fairly steady and predictable increments. No
longer. Today, with huge growth in Internet and multimedia traffic - to say
nothing of mobile - some networks are beginning to burst at the seams.
Oct. 11, 1999 The Full Story
The promise of a better-connected world at the start of
the new millennium - and the shadows of an information gap that threatens the
promise - were the interwoven themes that dominated the opening of Telecom 99
and Interactive 99 in Geneva, Switzerland this weekend.
Oct. 11, 1999 The Full Story