Changing Telecommunications: Building a Successful Telecom Business
November 29th, 2005
The field of telecommunications is becoming ever more complex. In order to manage the new Telecom industry it is necessary not only to understand its 3 main components, namely the end users, the technology and networks, and the business aspects, but also their vital inter-relationships.
Complexity leads to uncertainty, and one effect of uncertainty is for people to underestimate the complexity of the business and the technology. This book takes a holistic approach to the subject and can be used as a tool for decreasing this uncertainty.
Fundamentals of Optical Fibers offers students a timely, pedagogically consistent introduction to the fundamental principles of light propagation in fibers. In it, Professor John A. Buck reviews, in depth, fundamental waveguiding concepts, the influence of various fiber structures and materials on light transmission, nonlinear light propagation effects occurring in fibers, and various measurement techniques. Since the chief application of optical fibers is in communication systems, throughout the book the focus is on topics which pertain to that domain.
Ultra Wideband (UWB) is the hot new topic in wireless communication engineering today. High-speed communication over short distances using sub-nanosecond pulses, rather than conventional sinusoidal waves, has paved the way for cheap wireless transceivers, capturing the imagination of both academics and engineers in industry alike. Ultra Wideband Signals and Systems in Communication Engineering focuses on the basic signal processing that underlies current and future ultra wideband systems ensuring this text will be essential reading even as UWB applications mature and change or regulations regarding ultra wideband systems are modified. 
The latest in an increasingly popular string of works analyzing another burst bubble, this book takes on the demise of the telecom broadband industry. The author, formerly a writer at Red Herring and now an editor at Forbes, focuses on the individuals and corporations involved in some of the most egregious hypes and heists of the telecom industry. The individuals profiled include Bernie Ebbers (WorldCom), Phil Anschutz (Qwest), Gary Winnick (Global Crossing), Jim Crowe (Level 3 Communications), Ken Rice (Enron), Alex Mandl (Teligent), John Doerr (Excite@Home). Teddy Forstmann (Forstmann, Little & Co.), Jack Grubman (Salomon Smith Barney), John Roth (Nortel), Gururaj Deshpande and Daniel Smith (Sycamore Networks), and Vinod Khosla (Cisco). This is a lively work, though edging toward overblown, which delights in dishing the dirt on some once high and mighty industry giants. By providing background and details, however, it helps the reader connect individuals with corporations and gives insight into the tangled web that has now almost completely unraveled. Purchase where there is interest. —Susan Hurst, Miami Univ. Libs., Oxford, OH (Library Journal, June 15, 2003) 
“…the book is an excellent read with good reporting on the history of CDMA development in cellular radio.” Privateline.com 
The objective of the second volume of the Handbook of Telecommunications Economics is to highlight the economic aspects of the evolution of communications technologies beyond the basic fixed-line telephony infrastructure that was covered in Volume 1. In that book, structural, regulatory and competition policy issues with respect to a well-known technology were covered. Yet, technological options have increased in a quantum manner. Fuelled by the creativity of entrepreneurs and policy-makers world wide, it is safe to infer that a process of creative destruction is well underway. Volume 2 covers the major technological developments and tracks the changes in these developments linking them to the ways that both communications can take place and that institutions and policies can evolve. Written by world leading scholars in a manner that will be appreciated by a wide audience of academics and professionals, the fifteen detailed reviews that make up this book provide an academic perspective on these contemporary changes.
The last two decades have seen exceptionally fast rates of change in every aspect of the telecommunications industry. These include major technology changes and the convergence of the broadcasting, information technology and telecommunications industries. The earlier view of telecommunications as a natural monopoly has now given way to one in which almost all parts are susceptible to some form of competition. Simultaneously, market structure has changed through the replacement of the former monopolistic, vertically integrated telephone companies by a variety of competing firms. These developments have been accompanied by major legislative and regulatory developments, including the passing in the United States of the 1996 Telecommunications Act and the introduction of a large number of new laws and regulations in Europe and elsewhere. The same changes have seen a massive expansion of independent regulatory agencies. 
The book covers the design of a Global Mobile Broadband System (GMBS) based on the results of the European Commission’s Framework Programme 5 Information Society Technologies (IST) Project SUITED. Many of the latest concept in mobility solutions, network design techniques and internet technologies are presented. The SUITED project has addressed a number of technical issues that are very much state-of-the-art. The presentation of such material in the form of a design of a real network provides a unique source of information. 
