Telecommunications Essentials: The Complete Global Source for Communications Fundamentals, Data Networking and the Internet, and Next-Generation Networks

Interesting lecture!

The book does what it sets out to do - cover the basic underpinnings of modern telecom. Its' age (a scant three years) shows a bit here and there (some of the material obviously predating the book), but for the most part it is accurate and relevant. It is not a technical document, as 600 pages would not be enough to cover the component technology. It mentions occasionally the regulatory issues in telecom, but only in passing; its' primary focus is on business. It makes a good book for the student or someone interested in a telecom career. I might also recommend it to someone whose future plans include sitting through a telecom sales pitch or taking a meeting with telecom lobbyists (at least the part where they might drag in an engineer to talk about some cool new technology).When I say it has a business focus, I mean that it tries to explain the pros and cons of a particular technology in terms of cost, complexity, and ability to satisfy customer needs. Applying the same criteria, I would say the author has provided a moderately costly (that is, not free), easy to understand, and given the constraints of the business focus, does so rather well.But the book has a few flaws. Here's what I found -p.254 - "binary form" should read "dotted decimal form" - which the author uses correctly on the following page.p.255 - no mention of NAT (Network Address Translation) as a means of saving IPv4 address space. Like the author, I'd like to see IPv6 deployed before I'm too old to care.p.298 - the phrase "going forward" should be extirpated before the next edition. Also appears on p.312.p.310 - the author briefly mentions an imminent "talent dearth" as driving the next wave of technical innovation, then trots out some ITAA blurb about half the job vacancies going unfilled each year. Of course, training might also help the problem, if global business can be bothered with such trifles.p.340 - ANX was purchased by SAIC in 1999 I think, and its' URL as published has been deprecated. On the bright side, I did see a picture of a cute puppy when I went there.p.354 - in discussing voice chat in games, author uses Sega Dreamcast as example. Only the good die young...p.429 - author mentions Amsterdam. Sounds like reasonable grounds for a drug test to me! Of course, there's always the excuse of visiting the Van Gogh museum...p.459 merits a special mention as both the best and worst way to sell a wireless future. Not only will the world be at your fingertips, but it will be trying to gnaw them off. While the author sees a benevolent infrastructure where knowledge of your whereabouts and tastes will be used to respond to your needs quickly and thoroughly, I see a world where your convenience comes at the price of empowering spammers, stalkers, and government goons.Some of the parts I really enjoyed either because of their novelty or thoughtfulness were as follows:p.274-6 - talking about the notion of backhauling data, the author touches on a problem analogous to Net Neutrality.The Internet primer on p.259-80 was maybe the best I've read. Sadly it was too short.Also enjoyed the circuit-switching chapters 4 and 5.p.331 - author makes a case for tiered Internet. I'm hopeful we can keep "best effort" Internet service at a quality level sufficient for playing Battlefield 2 for the foreseeable future.This book is better than three stars, but not quite four. Were its' material a little fresher, it would merit four. I'll check out the website and update this review accordingly.

Telecommunications Essentials is a superb introduction to the larger field of telecommunications. The text is a rather lengthy book, with numerous illustrations and an expansive glossary, that can be read from cover to cover. The author does an excellent job of covering virtually every part of the telecom infrastructure, including POTS, fiber optics, residential broadband and wireless.The real difficulty in writing a book like this is deciding to what depth technical material should reach. The author does do a good job of describing some rather complex subjects without resorting to material requiring a formal technical education. Numerous diagrams aid in the readers understanding of the material. The comprehensive glossary also facilitates the learning process.Seldom does the author delve into detailed mathematics or the physics of propagation. Interestingly, she does describe coding schemes, which is important. There are some technical mistakes, however. In one very odd example, the author confuses femto- with peta- in which she describes "femtobits per second" Fbps. This is repeated, which makes one question the accuracy of other material and quality of the editing.Since there is no detailed description of hardware, circuits or semiconductors, this book is not for engineers. Rather if you are an investment professional or management consultant working in the area of telecommunications, it will provide a broad overview of telecommunications technology. The text is packed with the lingo of the industry. It also does a good job of explaining the basics of transmission and architecture. However, since it is geared more towards the marginally technical businessperson, it seems that there would be more mention of the players and the relationship between them such as IXC's, CLEC's, and RBOC's. Moreover, there is little mention of economics, which has been of great interest in the past four years as many notable bankruptcies and over-investment have made headlines.What it is lacking... It suffers from stale data due to the rapidly evolving telecom space. It appears that much of the information is current as of 2001. This leaves many of the recent developments in wireless out of the book. It appears that the author doesn't yet realize the dominance wireless will have in the marketplace. Moreover, discussion of the growth of fixed line-of-site and NLOS technologies are really not discussed. Also, there is little explanation of HFC. Lastly, there is no sections on OSS or billing, which are quite important as far as the industry is concerned.Despite the shortcomings, the book was an excellent read. I haven't come across another similar text, so it is quite hard to provide a comparison. The broad coverage makes the book at good starting point for entry into the telecommunications industry. Clearly, to get a better understanding of the specific components of the telecom infrastructure, one must reference other texts.