Kirjahaku

Explores and analyzes past and current technologies and trends in multimedia communication Digital natives—those persons born in the digital age—have an ever-widening range of wireless-enabled devices at their disposal. They are the drivers of multimedia communications, continually seeking out the technologies and distribution channels that best match their needs. This book outlines the changes in telecommunications that are occurring to meet these needs. It addresses the continually increasing requirement to provide connections that make the electronic encounter as natural and convenient as possible, exploring the vast assortment of devices that exist as part of everyday living for digital natives. Featuring precise diagrams and tables to illustrate the evolving environment, the book begins by describing the competitive interactions of telephone, cable TV, and cellular mobile companies in providing services and content. It outlines the creation of digital multimedia streams and how they are transported, explains what multimedia connections are available, and summarizes the activities of competitors while providing an overview of their markets and customer statistics. This book uniquely covers wireline, optical fiber, cable, and wireless access methods, explaining the coding required to create digital streams. It combines ethernet with provider bridging and multi-protocol label switching and highlights the necessity to serve legacy streams. In addition, the book addresses controversial issue: will incumbent communications providers ever overtake Internet as the chief source of digital feeds and popular contents? Featuring extensive references and a glossary of multimedia terms, Connections for the Digital Age is written for digital natives and other persons with an interest in multimedia communications; industrial, commercial, and financial managers; engineers; software professionals and Internet specialists; and students at technical schools and universities.

Organized society depends on communication of all kinds, including the ability to communicate at a distance, instantaneously. With the development of solid­ state electronics and its application to digital processing, telecommunication has become extremely important to large segments of American business. The in­ troduction of competition to serve these voice, data, and video needs has ex­ panded the number of service options available, and some of them are finding their way into the residential sector. From a relatively stable, mature industry, telecommunication has rapidly become a technology-driven marketplace in which a host of companies are competing for customer attention with new services and equipment. Heretofore, books on telecommunications have addressed facilities and how they work. In this book, I am seeking to provide a much broader perspective which includes information on the motives driving the business itself, on new media and services, and on advancing technologies, as well as on digital facilities and their integration into the environment of future businesses and households. Covering so wide a set of topics presents many problems, not the least of which is that the character of the information is different in each chapter, and the material will be read by persons skilled in disparate fields. It is possible to read each chapter by itself-although a reading of all of them is needed to understand the new dimensions being introduced into the telecommunication experience.