Telecommunications services in the next decade

In this paper, the authors present their views concerning what types of telecommunications services are likely to come into existence or become widespread during the next decade. The paper is organized in terms of fundamental customer needs which those services should help to satisfy. In particular, the following categories of needs are considered: i) Information Productivity, ii) Cost-Effectiveness and Control, iii) Telemarketing, iv) Media and Protocol Conversion, v) Entertainment, and vi) Telecommunications Ubiquity. Throughout the paper, the special role of ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) is highlighted. It is pointed out that ISDN provides generic capabilities--a standardized digital interface, wider bandwidth, and powerful, out-of-band signaling and control--which facilitate the construction of a wide variety of new services. Finally, after discussing many potential new services in detail, the authors summarize some of the major trends which seem certain to characterize the changing face of telecommunications services in the next decade. Among these are: wider bandwidth, more data and digitization, multimedia capability, services "on demand," and internationalization. The authors also briefly discuss network-based versus CPE-based services and the likely roles of public versus private networks.