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• Preface

• Alexander Graham Bell

• Telecommunications history

• How the telephone works

• Phone FUN facts

• Why the Phone Works When the Lights GO OUT

• FTTP (Fiber to the Prem)

• Future of Telecommunications

• Crossword Puzzle

• Word Search

• Glossary

• Credits

• Speech by Thomas Watson

The Future of Telecommunications

Communications is constantly changing. It is always adding features at faster and faster data transmission speeds to boot. The faster we send our information, the more we can send and the more “real” it appears and sounds.

Some of the newer services being offered include:

• Voice over IP (sending our voices over the Internet) is already being offered by some companies and will make it easier to add telephone services to our computers. You can simply find a website of interest (in Australia perhaps), click on the computer’s telephone icon, talk to your computer via its imbedded microphone and be carrying on a conversation with some person or business at 425 Kangaroo Drive, Alice Springs, in the distant Australian outback. “Fair Dinkum Mate,” (that’s Aussie slang for - ‘good job friend.’) Add a camera on each computer and you’ve got a videophone hook-up.

• FTTP (Fiber to the Premise) This is a new expanded service equivalent to adding a new hi-capacity “data super-highway” to everyone’s home - by comparison to the “data dirt roads” we now have connected. This fiber will allow huge amounts of information to travel into and out of your house, thereby paving the way for 2-way video phone calls, on-demand television services, and simultaneous multiple phone calls.