THE INTERNET

It’s hard to view the Internet as having been in an experimental stage. Technologically, what’s now known as the Internet is a collection of myriad techniques from other communications methods and networks. Some might contend Internet experimentation started in the 1970s and continued into the 1980s. Initially the Internet was a US Department of Defense (DOD) research project aimed at developing survivable networks. Over time, participation in the research was expanded to include academic and private research institutions. By the mid-1990s, the DOD had its survivable network. Responsibility for various administrative and technical functions previously held by the military was turned over to non-government entities.

Historically, and by example, telegrams—maybe even smoke signals or pounding on drums to send and receive coded messages—could be considered ‘‘data’’ communications. Telex service remains in use in some parts of the world. It had a counterpart in the United States called TWX. Telex service is an international service, whereas TWX is or was restricted to domestic US locations. Both services are enabled with a teletype, a machine created by combining telegraph key and typewriter technology. Telegrams are a service offering used when a teletype machine is used to create, transmit, and print a message for a third party. Telegrams ceased to be used in the early 1990s.

Telegrams, Telex, and TWX effectively died out in the 1990s. AT&T is said to have transmitted its last telegram in 1991. So the cannibalization of the telegraph by the telephone took almost a century.

It’s almost too complicated to go into, but along the way, AT&T and the RBOCs had, and continue to have, great challenges with anything outside telephone or voice services. The combined entities had deep and credible resources and capabilities without equal, except perhaps IBM. However, getting these resources to market was impossible because restrictions on AT&T equipment manufacture prohibited sale of their products to any other than the former BOCs. One result of divestiture and deregulation freed AT&T to sell computer equipment in competition with IBM and others. But coincidentally with the historic event in the telecom industry, Intel and Microsoft blindsided and blew away the dreams of the white-coat, MIS department mainframe computer industry, and those who would see AT&T as a possible competitor to IBM.

Setting all the issues of selling computer or computer-like equipment aside, the former AT&T and new entities had been and would continue to be dominant in a small and growing market for what started out as computer communications or data services. After all, AT&T long lines were first to install digital transmission and switching equipment in their network. Earlier FCC decisions had clearly and cleanly marked a dividing line between equipment and services. On the communications side a piece of equipment specifically defined as a customer services unit (CSU) faced another piece of equipment called a data services unit (DSU). The CSU was part of the computer system. The telephone company installed the DSU and included an amount in the monthly service charge. These functions are now built into equipment the customer buys and the telephone company installs at the customer’s location or nearby equipment cabinet.

Data communications has become a matter of buying compatible equipment and services. In a few short years, the Internet has taken hold across business and consumer or residential services like nothing in the past. Along with that change has come tough times for investors and employees, and opportunities for users to avail themselves of new capabilities. Now, and for the foreseeable future it’s ‘‘voice, data, and video.’’

Internet and Telecom: A Brief History

Alexander Graham Bell is credited with inventing the telephone sometime after Samuel B. Morse came up with the telegraph key and code, making smoke signals obsolete technology. Somewhere along the way, in the more recent past, computers learned to talk to one another over telephone lines. And then along came the Internet.

That’s almost enough history for practitioners. However, a perspective on the past is well worth a quick read because understanding some of the history, especially since 1982, provides insight into the changes the Telecom industry has undergone and how that has, or will impact media and entertainment industry operations in the future.

Keeping our focus on practical considerations it makes sense to start somewhere in the early part of the past century. After all, radio and telephones came from similar inventive roots and had electrical or ‘‘electronics’’ in common. It’s also instructive to observe that the two parted ways when digital electronics went solid state. With digital electronics—initially the switching transistor—devices could count and keep track of items or service transactions, calculate, or measure interesting, valuable operational and accounting characteristics of the business.

Someone figured out how to convert an analog signal into digital form, and the telephone world went for it with a vengeance. On the other hand, radio and television receivers didn’t warm to digital techniques until well after integrated circuits with divide and multiply capability became cost effective for use in tuners. Other similar events along the way could be mentioned, but suffice it to say that broadcasting and consumer electronics lagged the telephone industry in adoption of digital technology by many years and did so, one painful step at a time.

The telephone industry was digital in nature from the start. For example, the basic business transaction unit, or service function, was and still is, a phone call. The line was in use or it was free. It could be used or one had to wait. One person could talk to one person at a time (until party lines were figured out). One operator could connect two parties to make conversation, later capitalized by the industry in the form of a telephone call.

Almon B. Strowger, a Kansas City undertaker, invented the stepping switch to allow customers to decide between his establishment and a competitor without undue influence of the wife of his competitor who just happened to be the local telephone operator. The stepping switch enabled the industry to continue in a mechanized and automated fashion, without operators, one telephone call at a time, the staple of long distance telephone bills.

Audio—the staple of radio—was analog and stayed that way. In 2003, radio broadcasters began upgrading transmission facilities to digital transmission.

Video might be characterized as digital in nature—at the very least it’s highly structured. Pioneer inventors Philo Farnsworth and Vladimir Zworykin both conceived a fixed, repetitive scan structure. Farnsworth reportedly conceived his version while plowing successive rows in a field.

Historically, telephony, radio, and television share a common business life-cycle behavior. Still in relative infancy, the Internet seems to be evolving in similar fashion. The life-cycle includes three distinct phases starting with experimentation, moving into growth and consolidation, and finally into a mature state where the technology continues to evolve and the business segment makes a continuing contribution to the economy over a long time.

PSTN-Internet Interworking Product Types

We have deliberately avoided reviewing specific vendor products. Instead, we outline generic families of existing products, describing their features, major parameters, and—whenever applicable—criteria for interworking with other products. Because new products emerge constantly and existing products are updated frequently, you should expect the product capabilities listed here to change.

You should obtain the latest descriptions from the product vendors for details like prices and performance characteristics. The product families we focus on correspond to the three categories of PSTN-Internet interworking:

1. Carrying voice across both the IP networks and the PSTN. Products include IP telephony gateways [usually called voice-over-IP (VoIP) gateways in the trade], gatekeepers, multipoint conferencing units, and private branch exchanges (PBXs).
2. Combining PSTN transport and the Internet access to PSTN services. Products include intelligent network service nodes and intelligent peripherals. The messaging platforms that support unified messaging also fit here, because a central feature is that they rely on IN control. Note: You could argue that multimedia support by these products justifies including them in the previous item, while access support warrants placing them in the next list item.
3. Carrying data over PSTN lines on the way to IP networks. Products that support remote access and VPN applications include access servers, Signalling System No. 7 gateways, and class 5 (that is, local) switches with multiservice capabilities.