Two Telecom
Buzzwords You
Should Know
About

We become more powerful and productive when we know how to speak the language of our time. Our lives have become filled with jargon and acronyms; - fax, e-mail, PC, VCR, CD-ROM, and so on.

With most jargon, though, many terms are meaningful only to those high priests who have made that field their life work. But in telecommunications, a number of phrases hide technology which will soon dramatically effect the way we do business. Let's take a look at two.

ISDN is short for Integrated Services Digital Network. ISDN has been around for over a decade, which means it's completely out of date and way behind the cutting edge of technology. That's why, of course, the large telephone companies are finally getting enthusiastic about it. (Hey, it only took them 100 years or so to figure out they could make more money in a competitive environment than a monopoly!)

But being behind the cutting edge doesn't mean that ISDN isnt a useful tool. ISDN allows you to send and receive far more information than over your old telephone line, and in most places it doesn't cost substantially more that your current service. It does its magic by turning everything - voice, fax, and computer data - into a digital data stream. This means ISDN is really fast!

Have you ever tried to "surf the internet" or log onto an information service with an old modem? Watching moss grow is more exciting. But with ISDN you can get up to 5 times the speed of today's fastest modems.

And ISDN can replace multiple regular phone lines. For around $40 -$50 per month, you can simultaneously make a call, send a fax, and surf the Net. The major downside to ISDN is that you have to order it from your local telephone company. You may find that you know far more about ISDN than the person you get on the phone. Be persistent - it's worth the trouble.

Frame Relay is a new technology that is going to make calling from the U.K. to Saudi Arabia as inexpensive as it is to call from New York to Boston in the States (and if you're spending more than 14c/minute for that call, you're paying too much).

Time for a little telecom history lesson: Many years ago, the structure of the telecoms establishment kept the cost of voice calls exorbitantly high. In many countries laws and regulations prohibited even the faintest hint of competition on voice.

You see, up until about 20 years ago, there was a very clear distinction between voice calls and data transmissions. Voice was slow and analog, while data was fast and digital.

By Cliff Rees

But voice comprised 97% or more of all traffic on the public network, so they didn't see the need to write nearly as stringent rules governing data.

Frame Relay makes it possible to send voice over a data network. Lots of voice - with good quality - very inexpensively. It costs almost no more to send information from the U.K. to Saudi Arabia than from New York to Boston. You pay more because that's the way it's always been. But not with Frame Relay. As Frame Relay switches get integrated into international networks over the next three years, you're going to see international rates plummet to low U.S. domestic levels. This will be great news for all of us. And remember, you read it here first.

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