QoS for Fixed and Mobile Ultra-Broadband

1Introduction

The telecommunications world has been developing at a rapid pace since the growth of the Internet in the 1990s and 2000s. Nowadays telecommunications is also referred to as information and communication technologies (ICT), as stated by the largest telecommunications agency in the world, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) [1], a specialized agency of the United Nations. Telecommunications has been around for more than 150 years, starting with telegraphy in the nineteenth century. In fact, the telecommunications world and the ITU have been interrelated since 1865 when the ITU was formed as the International Telegraph Union. Nowadays, telegraphy belongs to history (it has become redundant since the appearance of email and other messaging services available worldwide today). But speaking about the history of telecommunications, after Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876 the following century was marked by the development and deployment of telephony, with fixed telephony until the 1980s accompanied by mobile telephony worldwide from the 1990s. Of course, one should not forget to mention television and radio as important telecommunication services during the twentieth century, and they continue to be so in the twenty‐first century.

ICT has created a globally connected world, not only giving people the ability to communicate with each other but also opening up access to information and facilitating the exchange of information. The foundation ...