Since a hundred years ago, the worldwide telecom network enables universal inter-personal voice communication. The services provided by the network have evolved over time which is cause from technical changes. There are many changes such as from connection through human operator to electromechanical to electronic switches ; from only national or local calls to seamless international calls ; from one basic service to added value service and most importantly from wired access to wireless access.

Wired Technologies

~A typical wired network~

~The various connection of wired network~

Wired technology has been around for ages. It first became popular in the early 1900's with the introduction of the telephone network. The use of wired connections trigger the creation of other technologies like multiplexing and SONET. Electronic signals are being transmitted over a metal conductor through the use of physical wires. Currently, this is the most reliable way to transmitting or receiving data or voice. The Internet transmits a large amount of data through fiber optic cabling and also employs a large amount of T1/T3 lines that run over standard copper wiring. Thus, wired technologies refers to copper wiring but does not include fiber optic technologies. Below are different types of wired technologies:

Twisted-paired wire
Ordinary telephone wire which is made up of copper wire twisted into pairs. It is the most widely used medium for telecommunications. This is because twisted-pair wire is very cheap to install. The transmission bits is within 2 million bits per second (unshielded) and 100 million bits per second (shielded).

Coaxial Cable
Consist of sturdy copper or aluminum wire which is wrapped with spacers to insulate and protect it. Coaxial cable is more expensive than twisted-pair wire. The transmission speed is from 200 million to over 500 million bits per second (200 - 500 Mbps).

Fiber-Optic Cable
Uses cable which consists of one or more hair-thin filaments of glass fiber wrapped in a protective jacket. Fiber-optic cable is the most expensive type of cable. Like wise, it is very secure, 100 times faster speed than coaxial cabel, greater carrying capacity and it does not make any noise.

Wireless Technologies

Wireless telecommunications technologies rely on radio wave, microwave, infrared, and visible light pulses to transport digital communications without wires between the communications devices. It is used when the situation is inconvenient, impractical, or impossible to install cables. There are a lot kinds of wireless technologies nowadays such as cell phones, PDAs, mobile radio, Bluetooth and others as described below :

Terrestrial Microwave

Include earthbound microwave systems transmit high-speed radio signals. It follows a line-of-sight path between relay systems that consist of space around 30 miles apart. This kind of microwave is used in large companies or universities. They can transmit data at rates up to 4500 times faster than dial-up modem.

Communication Satellites

Their telecommunications mediums is the use of microwave radio. Satellites are powered by solar panels and can transmit microwave signals at a rate of several hundred million bits per second. They were used initially for voice and video transmission but now they are also used for high speed transmission of large volumes of data.

Wireless Web

Wireless internet, intranets, and extranets access is growing as web-enabled information appliances proliferate. Wireless web is used in smart phones, pagers, PDAs to provide web access through a "Web clipping" technology.

The Effect of Evolution

Today, the evolution of wireless technologies continues to improve airlink performance. However, additional emphasis is placed on seamless wireless-converged enhancements. The end-user trends are shifting from wired to wireless. Therefore, wireless devices mentioned above is becoming famous and common in the society.

Through advancements in wireless technologies, operators have achieved continuous improvements and cost savings with higher data speeds and the increase in network capacity.
Besides that. customers have also benefited from the technology evolution. For instance, enterprise customers gain benefits from worker productivity, efficiencies in operations and increased customer satisfaction levels.