Overview of Telecommunications
How things have changed!
Remember when...
- Telephone "party lines"
allowed your neighbors to listen to your conversation.
- Reaching someone by
telephone required that they had to be in one particular location.
- Sending information
to someone took several days.
- News was always at
least several hours old.
- Keeping track of customer
information meant endless stacks of index cards.
- Typewriter erasers
were standard office supplies.
- Checking your spelling
on business documents meant looking them up in the dictionary.
- Computers were bigger
than executive desks and had to be kept in temperature controlled
rooms.
- Using a computer meant
you had to learn another "language".
- Sending a message
to someone required a stamp.
- Talking on the telephone
as you moved about required a long telephone cord.
- The only businesses
that could afford computers were large corporations.
The way we communicate
with others as well as how we market and manage our businesses has
changed in a very short time. Technology has become smaller, less
expensive, easier to use, portable and faster. In 1971 the typical
computer microprocessor handled 40,000 instructions per second; by
1991 that rate of speed had progressed to 40 million instructions
per second. And the speed and capacity of information and communication
technologies continues to grow.
What does this revolution
of technology and telecommunications have to offer entrepreneurs?
Power, profits and opportunity.
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