Telecommunications: 
The Opportunity and the Challenge

Telecommunications is Reshaping Business

•	Telecommunications: the electronic transmission of information in analog or digital form
•	Transmission: the movement of signals of some kind across a communications link of some kind
•	Efficiency and Effectiveness: nowadays the entire organization depends on telecommunications
•	Real-time updates and transactions: vital to the nation's business
•	Terminals: they're everywhere!

Explosive Pace of Technological Change

•	Competition: the divestiture of AT&T opened Pandora's Box
•	Speed of Transmission: today is 100,000 times greater than we hoped for in the 70s
•	Access Tools: wired and wireless phones, cash registers, computers, Blackberries, pagers, fax machines, scanners and bar code readers, etc.
•	Interoperability: all the elements have to work together.  That requires integration and convergence

Change as the Norm in Technology

•	Competition ensures innovation in products and decreases in prices
•	Developments in transmission stimulate competition, drastically cut prices, increase the range of information that can be transmitted
•	New uses of telecommunications: new services added to an existing telecommunications base for little cost
•	Electronic Data Interchange (EDI): the transmission of electronic documents in standard and convertible formats

Need for New Management Processes

•	The mixture of technical innovation, competition and a variety of applications make telecommunications:
•	an important business resource
•	a complex, specialized and volatile technology
•	a field that is highly interdependent with computers and information systems that process transactions
•	Few managers have skills in all areas: business experts don't talk technical jargon and TEL managers don't speak business
•	Business decisions and technical choices are equally important

Business Decision Sequence

•	Identify the business opportunity
•	Define the business criteria for the technical design of the telecommunications platform
•	Identify the network design priorities and trade-offs
•	Make the economic case for the investment

Identify the Business Opportunity

•	Run the business better: use telecommunications to streamline internal processes and cut costs
•	Gain an edge in existing markets: successfully compete in your core business
•	Create product and market innovation: use telecommunications to create new opportunities and open new markets

Define the Business Criteria for the Telecomm Platform

•	Reach: the locations, people, organizations to which we must link
•	Range: the variety of information and transactions we must be able to share across business functions
•	Responsiveness: level of service we guarantee – in terms of speed, reliability, and security

Identify the Network Design Priorities and Tradeoffs

•	Capability: the technical applications and services the network platform provides
•	Flexibility: how easily the network can accommodate growth and change
•	Certification: reliability and level of service the network guarantees
•	Cost: fixed, variable development, and operations

Make the Economic Case

•	Clearly demonstrate the benefits of one or more of the following enhancements:
•	Improve profit management and alerting systems to enable rapid response to changing market forces
•	Improve traditional costs: labor, real estate, information technology
•	Provide premium quality without adding a cost premium: build a better mousetrap
•	Provide premium customer service without adding a cost premium: cash in on customer satisfaction
•	Improve long-term infrastructure costs and improve revenues

The Need for Hybrid Designers

•	Dichotomy between business people and telecommunications people: marked by a wide gap in vocabulary, knowledge and priorities
•	Firms are looking for "hybrids" – people who understand the business context and understand the technology
•	Such people are not necessarily "experts" in both fields but know enough of each to bridge the gap

Three Voices

•	The Client – has a business need
•	The Designer – translates need into telecommunications technical blueprint (architecture) for implementation
•	The Implementer – chooses the specific technical components and builds the network
•	Dialog moves from "what" to "how"

The Cost of Silence Across Business/Telecommunications

•	The importance of dialog between client and designer and designer and implementer
•	Ignorance or disregard of the business implications of telecommunications: Wal-Mart vs. K-Mart, Sears and Penny's; American Airlines vs. Delta and Eastern
•	Senior management rigidity and technical manager business and social ignorance
•	The sociology of telecommunications: don't give the people something they don't want

A Business/Telecomm Career Map

•	Describes the nature of hybrids
•	Maps the concerned parties in two dimensions:
•	Business expertise
•	Technical expertise
•	From novice to expert

Telecommunications and Business Innovation

•	Telecommunications has become synonymous with service – transactions that once took weeks now take days or moments
•	Information is the new world currency:  top retailers get information from each store every two hours
•	Physical exports v. electronic exports: which is greater?
•	On-line transactions are becoming more prevalent
•	speed
•	substituting telecommunications for paper

Telecommunications and International Development

•	Telecommunications traffic is a better way to gauge economic activity than imports and exports
•	Every 1% increase in the number of phones translates to 3% increase in per capita income
•	No phone service?  No business!
•	The first world: What's good for General Bullmoose is good for the USA, Japan, and Western Europe
•	The second world: Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union
•	The third world: Africa and Latin America

Network:  The Core Technology

•	Network – a set of devices that share a directory and can thus directly access each other
•	Public network – available to a wide range of subscribers on a pay-as-you-go basis
•	Private network – the transmission facility is leased by a firm for its own use
•	Local area network – links personal computers and peripherals within the same building or building complex
•	Wide area network – covers a broad geographic area