Essential Guide to Telecommunications, The, Third Edition

Conclusion

In most of the twentieth century, governments subsidized telecommunications monopolies and guaranteed their rate of return on investments in exchange for monopolies building and maintaining national networks. At that time, network construction was so capital and labor intensive that it was felt that only large monopolies had the necessary resources to build secure networks. However, as new technologies such as microwave, fiber optics and computer-controlled switches were developed, private companies became capable of supporting backbone networks to reliably carry enormous amounts of traffic. Carriers today are building wireline and wireless networks and adding innovative new Internet, data and messaging services.

However, no single ...