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In spite of the many developments that have taken place in the field of telecommunications, we are yet to witness any revolutionary change in the way we communicate and the way we interact. Telecommunications is still very costly, it is still very difficult (keeping in view how much training we need to use a new telecom device), we need a variety of gadgets to access different services, and we need to subscribe to a variety of networks.
In this part of the book, we discuss the new technologies and systems that have been conceived and commercialized in the last decade of the 20th century. These technologies are paving the way for the ‘anywhere anytime’ communication. The digital mobile communication systems have been widely deployed in the 1990's and now using these systems for Internet access is catching up through technologies such as WAP, GPRS, 3G etc. The Internet is now emerging as the platform for voice, fax and video transmission as well. Computers and telephones were worlds apart earlier, but not any longer—Computer Telephony Integration is now paving the way for unified messaging—a technology that makes our lives easier by making computers speak and understand our speech. Wireless Personal Area Networks will soon become popular wherein devices in office and home can communicate with one another without the need for wires— thanks to the technologies such as Bluetooth and IrDA. We will study these exciting technologies in this part of the book.
This part of the book contains 10 chapters covering the details of mobile computing and convergence technologies. The last chapter gives a glimpse of the services and applications that will be available to us in the next decade, which will make the utopia of "Global Village" a reality.
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