Digital communication of voice: development of Integrated Services Digital Networks (ISDN) and its implications for Information Management

1993

The implementation of the Integrated Services Digital Networks (ISDN) in most advanced nations of the world marks the beginning of the end of the traditional piecemeal approach to developments in communication networks ISDN, which is a product of digital technology, aims to integrate the existing disparate networks into a single electronic highway tor the combined transport of information in a multiplicity of formats While the provision of a whole portloho of services on a single line sounds ideal for the business environment, unfortunately, the main thrust for ISDN, at the moment, is coming from technological push rather than from market pull Many putential customers are sceptical about the usefulness of the ISDN service for a number of reasons such as cost, standardisation problems and the need to upgrade existing hardware The purpose of this paper is to make a detour of the ISDN landscape of Europe, North America and the Far East to review current developments and applications, and also to examine the reasons for the present low customer base for the service The ISDN service is likely to remain as nothing more than an expensive and sophisticated technological highway unless telecommunication vendors play a more proactive role in promoting customer awareness through the development and demonstration of a whole range of new business-driven applications.

Section: What Is Isdn?mentioning

confidence: 99%

ISDN: an emerging electronic highway for business data communications

1993

“…Broadly speaking, there are two methods for the encoding of speech: waveform coding and vocoding (analysis/synthesis method) (20,21]. As the name suggests, waveform coders (e.g.…”

Section: Speech Encodingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Existing analogue networks are not very suitable for this purpose as the quality of voice I/O will degrade significantlv during transmission. The recent progress in the implementation of digital switched transmission networks and developments in the application of packet switching technology to voice transmission should overcome this problem and Philip [20,21] has recently reviewed the progress in these areas.…”

Section: Unresolved Problems and Human Factors (Ergonomics)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Man machine interaction by voice: Developments in speech technology

Young

1987

Self Cite

Man-machine communication by voice is no longer a far-fetched notion Indeed the ' talking and listening' machine has already left the frontiers of science fiction fantasv. This paper outlines the limitations of existing means of commumcation with computers and the background to developments in voice input/output technology. Within the area of man-machine communication by voice there are three main avenues of research: speech synthesis (voice output), speaker recognition (identification and verification), and speech recognition (voice input). The technology common to these developments is speech encoding-digital representation of voice signals for processing by a computer. Techmques of speech encoding and speech synthesis are relatively well developed Speech recognition technology, however, is still in its infancy The recogrution task is complicated chiefly by the fact that characteristics of the speech signal differ from person to person, and even in the speech of one individual on different occasions. Because of this, it is more practical to divide speech recognition into four smaller categories, according to whether the systems are speaker-dependent or independent and recognized isolated words or continuous speech. Most of the commercially available systems are speaker-dependent/Isolated word systems. Up to now such systems have been hamstrung by poor recognition accuracy, insufficient vocabulary size-typically in the region of 100 to 200 words-and high implementation cost. Fortunatelv, the situation is improving rapidly and, indeed, claims for recently marketed systems sound most impressive-accurate recognition of up to 1000 words or more. The ultimate goal in speech recognition is speaker-independent/continuous speech systems which, although technologically feasible at the present time, may hot be available commercially for some time yet. And finally, speaker recogmtion can be regarded as a special case of speech recognition: nevertheless it is different in terms of its practical applications. . Existing products are particularly swtable for ' hands-busy. eyes-busy' operations and indeed they are used in several manufacturing applications and also as aids to the disabled They have also made a significant impact in voice store-andforward applications. Those who are planning to use Voice I/O systems have a wide range of technological options from which to choose These include complete turn-key systems, penpheral attachments to one's own computer, plug-in boards, chips and even software packages. However most potential users are taking a cautious approach because of technological and economic uncertainties in the speech product market. There is no reliable guide for users to assess the standards of performance of individual systems. There are also several other problems still to be resolved before speech technology products become widely applicable. These range from computation and technical problems-phonetic, semantic and syntactical-to user acceptance/interface of the end-products.Part II (following paper in t...

Regulation and deregulation of telecommunications: the economic and political realities. Part I: The United States

Tsoi

1988

Telecommunications in the information society has evolved into a multifaceted industry of great commercial value and significance. Indeed, it has become a multi-billion dollar in dustry with a projected worldwide turnover of over $540 billion by the year 1990. Telecommunications has also emerged as the obvious electronic highway for the transmission of information in a multiplicity of formats. Probably as a direct response to the commercial success and changing role of telecommunications, a number of developed countries includ ing Japan are either privatizing or liberalizing their respective telecommunication networks. Whilst deregulation is a new concept for most countries, the United States, as part of her policy of encouraging open competition and free enterprise, has traditionally operated the most deregulated telecommuni cations in the World. Despite this, her telecommunications industry was, until recently, dominated by AT&T which was probably the world's largest privately owned business. The divestiture of the company during the early eighties coupled with the trade concessions have enabled many of its rivals—notably MCI—to gain a significant foothold, particu larly in the lucrative long-haul sector. In the first part of this series of papers, we examine not only the theoretical issues in liberalization but also the benefits, politics, economics and consequences of deregulation in the light of the American experience. Obviously there are a number of lessons which the rest of the World can learn from the US and these are considered towards the end of the paper.