Access to the Internet is an increasing problem in many areas of the world. As the popularity and usefulness of the Internet increases on a daily basis, lack of access to the technology is putting many groups at a disadvantage in terms of better education, better jobs and even in terms of higher levels of civic participation. However, creating a network infrastructure to serve outlying communities and sectors of the population is not straight-forward.

This book brings together all the aspects of the problem – technical, regulatory and economic – into one volume to provide a comprehensive resource. It describes the latest technological advances that allow cost-effective network infrastructures to be built, and places them in the context of the applications and services that the infrastructure will deliver. A section on business models and case studies from North American and Europe demonstrate that the solutions are economically and practically viable.

This book is essential for anyone looking to gain an understanding of the issues and technology surrounding the access debate. It will be of particular relevance to network engineers/designers/planners at the incumbent operator companies charged with delivering broadband access to as yet unconnected regions.  Governments and regulatory bodies will also find this a useful guide to the problems that they may face.

This comprehensive book gives you a hands-on understanding of the techniques and architectures being used to provide voice and data services over wireless networks. It serves as a unified “how it works” guide to wireless Internet telecommunications, systematically addressing each of the technological components and how they fit together. You get a clear picture of protocols like RTP for multimedia transport and SIP for session control signaling, and see what’s being done to tackle tough challenges in QoS control, mobility management, and security in the wireless environment. The book discusses at length the cutting-edge IP Multimedia Sub-System (IMS) of UMTS to illustrate how each of these crucial components can be successfully implemented in a real-world wireless IP system.

Internet and wireless technologies are converging towards an exciting future that we’ve only begun to realize. For professionals who have a background in the Internet or in mobile telephony – but not in both – this integrated “how it works” guide offers a practical understanding of wireless Internet communications, the technology components involved, and how they fit and work together. It provides a unified picture of important protocols for multimedia transport and session control, and explains what’s being done to tackle tough challenges in QoS control, mobility management, and security in the wireless environment. With enhancements to the next generation of the Internet protocol expected to provide greater support for wireless IP networks, the next Internet revolution may be just around the corner. This book provides professionals with what they need to know about the techniques and architectures that will get us there.

Recently, the emergence of wireless and mobile networks has made possible the admission of electronic commerce to a new application and research subject: mobile commerce, defined as the exchange or buying and selling of commodities, services, or information on the Internet through the use of mobile handheld devices. In just a few years, mobile commerce has emerged from nowhere to become the hottest new trend in business transactions. However, the prosperity and popularity of mobile commerce will be brought to a higher level only if information is securely and safely exchanged among end systems (mobile users and content providers).

Advances in Security and Payment Methods for Mobile Commerce includes high-quality research papers and industrial and practice articles in the areas of mobile commerce security and payment from academics and industrialists. It covers research and development results of lasting significance in the theory, design, implementation, analysis, and application of mobile commerce security and payment.

This volume examines the convergence of biotechnology and communication systems and explores how this convergence directly influences our understanding of the nature of communication. Editor Sandra Braman brings together scholars to examine this convergence in three areas: genetic information and “facticity”; social issues and implications; and the economic and legal issues raised by the production and ownership of information. The work highlights the sophisticated processes taking place as biotechnology and information technology systems continue to evolve.

The chapters in this book approach the complex history of this topic and the issues it raises from a number of directions. It begins by examining the shared features and spaces of biotechnology and digital information technologies as meta-technologies–qualitatively distinct from both the tools first used in the premodern era and the industrial technologies that characterized modernity. Next, the book explores what is and is not useful in treating the types of information processed by the two meta-technologies through a shared conceptual lens and looks at issues raised by the ownership of genetic and digital information. The final chapters are concerned with relationships between information and power.