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Presenter: Dr. Thomas E. (Ted) Darcie
Supervisor:

Date: Mon, March 25, 2002
Time: 19:00:00 - 00:00:00
Place: Centre for Innovative Teaching - Room CIT 105

ABSTRACT

Dramatic technology advances of the last two decades have re-shaped the telecommunications industry, re-defining businesses and blurring traditional lines between incumbent service providers. They also created an abundance of opportunities for aggressive and nimble new entrants, promising to jump-start the future era of Internet-Protocol-enabled (IP-enabled) services. In the late 1990s, the expectation of boundless demand for bandwidth, and the promise of new services and differentiating technologies, drove investment in telecommunications to unprecedented levels. As a result, the pace of technical innovation has been astounding.

In this seminar we explore past and present dynamics of the telecommunications industry and the technologies that drive innovation. Prior to 2001, key technologies, most notably optical systems, wireless networks, and signal processing technology, advanced at phenomenal rates. For example, the bandwidth carried over a single optical fiber more than doubled every 12 months. Digital signal processing reduced the bandwidth required for digital video transmission by 50 times. Enormously complex cellular communications systems were shrunk into pocket-sized cellular handsets. Each of these accomplishments created imbalances within the industry. Previously independent voice, data, and video service providers now had the means to attack each other's turf, while being attacked from a host of insurgents.

Unfortunately, it became trendy to overestimate the power and impact of technology evolution. Our over-inflated expectations of demand for network bandwidth and opportunities for new revenue drove far more investment that could be supported, and 2001 brought the beginning of a long and painful correction. Now that more rational business values have been restored, there is a clear need to focus technical innovation on revenue, efficiency, and cost. Numerous emerging technologies target these objectives, including label-switched IP networks, broadband access systems, unified messaging, speech recognition, and speech synthesis. We will sample some of these advances, and demonstrate the present capabilities of natural language human-machine interaction, a technology that has evolved from fantasy to become a key component to improving customer experience and reducing cost in telecommunications networks.