A Look to the Future

Global communications is becoming more and more intensified through electronic media facilitating trade contacts and international projects. The key words for the future are multimedia and mobile telecommunications. Multimedia communications is based on the traditions of both telecommunications and information technologies.

Now computers are able to do all kinds of telecommunications, telephone, data transfer and videophone communications and e-mail, when the computer contains a modem and is connected to the telephone network. Teleshopping and telebanking are also possible. Today and especially tomorrow you can do everything from home. The only problems are now the transmission speed of networks, especially telephone network. Therefore, it is necessary to build a new or a better second world-wide network along with the existing telephone network.

World-wide industrialized nations are deploying the Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN). That offers speeds of more than a megabit per second using special copper and fibre-optic wire. Researchers, consumer video services and network element providers will have collaborated to create a comprehensive platform for the interactive video services delivery to consumers’ homes via standard television. These services will include movies on demand, interactive television, teleshopping, telebanking, databases and videophone. One cable to the home or one network for all is the target of this development. The origin of this fever was the Internet. The Internet can carry these real-time traffic types, to a limited degree today, to a larger degree tomorrow. And the new communications system will able to contain all of these features.

Now, the researchers have to solve the problems of connection between different networks. There are LANs (local-area-networks) and WANs (wide area networks) and these networks will be able to be connected together. Network externalities are essential; that is, the recruitment of end users, the compatibility of signal protocols and electrical interfaces, and the reliability and full-time availability of the infrastructure. If we want to build a world-wide network with the same coherence as the telephone network, then we need an international organization for standardization of the protocols.

Also necessary is fault-tolerant software and the possibility for customers to define services and manage them in a supportive environment. The network operator will manage each desktop component of customer equipment separately, offering transparent client and server computing through network services. The concept of self- provisioning lets customers buy network capacity like electricity. Just plug in.

The cable industries together with the satellites are the major players in the development of networks. The two components (terrestrial and satellite) must be as closely integrated as possible. Networks need transmission routes which enable fast transmission speed with less loss in efficiency. The wire of the future will be the fibre-optic wire. That new optic wire enables transmission speed of 10 Gb/s.

Mobile communications will play a major role in the future too. It will be cheaper than today and used by more public people. The mobile systems (cell phones with notebook) provide a wide variety of services, possibly the same set of services as the fixed network and with the same quality. Communications will be possible from every point in the world.

However, we should not forget that this new communications technique does not only bring us advantages. Networking incorporates isolation of the user. Important social values such as tolerance, sense of community, responsibility and personnel development could be shifted into the background, the perception will be strongly manipulated and, as a result, the picture of the reality.