Communications – One of the Basic Global Utilities, Bringing People Together?

Abstract

For more than 100 years, communication was known as reliable voice communication. Everything was focused around the voice and to extend the reach of voice communication globally, on an automated basis, in every country in the world. When electronic switching was introduced, the Software age started, and contributed highly to the flexibility of the systems; feature richness and functional differentiation became the key. Much later, as a separate network, data communications started in various forms and every type of data network was a specific type of network, with its own features and functionalities. Data communications became quite expensive, so it was mainly applied in business, government and military networks, all nicely separated from each other (Fig. 1).