39.3 EMERGING APPLICATIONS

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Optical fiber provides high-capacity transmission bandwidths. Though optical fiber is used extensively in the backbone network, fiber to the home will become predominant in the coming years. When gigabits of bandwidth is available on the local loop, and the backbone network consists of high-speed switches and trunks, what kind of services can be envisaged? The number of television channels can increase drastically. Though the present TV transmission systems are still analog, digital TV is making inroads. Up to 1000 TV channels can be provided through the optical fiber using the present state of the art. Even if we surf the TV channels at the rate of 15 seconds per channel, it will take four hours to see them all.

Today, TV manufacturers advertise home theatres. Home theatres facilitate watching high-quality TV programs and listening to high fidelity music. With the availability of large bandwidth, there is a distinct possibility of having home studios. As shown in Figure 39.3, every home can become a studio with a full-fledged video camera and video reception equipment. People at two or more homes can participate in full-fledged video conferencing.

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Figure 39.3: Home studio.

Convergence is paving the way for unification of different communication networks and services. Users can access any service using a device of his choice.

Recent advances in wireless technologies to provide data rates up to 50Mbps will facilitate high-bandwidth services to be supported even while we are on the move. Because mobile devices will have the power of today's desktop computers, mobile applications will support integrated data, voice, and video services.

Note

Wireless local loops are also being used in urban areas because this technology obviates the need for burying lines, and also maintenance is easy.

Wireless local loop technologies will be a great boon to remote and rural areas. Particularly in developing countries, the majority of the people live in rural areas, and they can be provided with low-cost communication services to improve their quality of life.

Future telecommunications networks will consist of high-speed backbone networks using optical fiber as the transmission medium. The access to these networks will be through high-speed wireless networks that support multimedia services.

The high bandwidths also facilitate a number of value-added services to be offered to all the people. Some important value-added services are:

Telemedicine, or medicine at a distance: In areas where there is no access to medical doctors, patients can use video conferencing to interact with a doctor at a far-off place and get the necessary medical advice.
Web-based learning: Though Web-based learning is becoming popular, because of lack of good Internet infrastructure in most parts of the world, accessing multimedia content with high-quality video and animation is a problem. Web-based learning will attain prominence in future.
Collaborative working: Groups of researchers in different parts of the world can carry out combined research using the communication infrastructure. Collaborative work is also likely to be used effectively in software development.
Virtual tours: Sitting in one's home, one can take a virtual tour of any of the historical places located anywhere in the world. Though as a concept it has been there for a few years, the communication infrastructure makes it a distinct commercial possibility.

Note

Telemedicine is used extensively in developed countries for providing health care for remote and rural areas. This technology is of great benefit to developing countries, where there is a dearth of medical professionals.

A number of universities offer formal education programs (M.S. and M.B.A. degrees) through e-learning mode.

If we let our imaginations fly, we can think of many more exciting applications. The communication infrastructure is only a platform; how we use it for our basic needs, our entertainment, our education, our social interactions, and our business activities depends on us.

High-bandwidth wireless access will make anytime, anywhere communication a reality. New, exciting services such as telemedicine, e-learning, collaborative working, and virtual tours will be available to users.

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