IEEE Communications Magazine

Asatani (1994) reported on a variety of topics, including broadband aspects of ISDN (B-ISDN), intelligent network (IN), future public land mobile telecommunication systems (FPLMTS), and audiovisual multimedia services (AVMMS). With the exception of IN, the present report covers progress in those same areas, with a status report on telecommunication management network (TMN) and universal personal t... View full abstract»

The author presents a transport performance quality of service (QoS) parameter set, which enables applications to describe their required performance properties and guarantees appropriately. The performance QoS is provided at the service interface of the Transport and Internetworking Package (TIP), which is an adaptive transport system based on an object-oriented and modular architecture View full abstract»

Several off-the-shelf animation software packages provide extensive capabilities, obviating the need for studios to develop their own software, except for highly specialized effects and interfaces. These capabilities make it feasible for a university to educate students in animation production without years of software development. The author discusses The UTS School of Cinema-Television and The U... View full abstract»

The authors have examined the basic characteristics of hybrid-fiber coax (HFC) return systems to evaluate their ability to support bidirectional communications. The ability to support bidirectional communications on cable plants will allow deployment of two-way video applications as well as telecommunications services over the HFC plant. The results of the studies indicate that ingress in the cabl... View full abstract»

The United Kingdom offers franchised cable television operators the unique opportunity to provision a competitive telephony service in addition to multichannel television services. The TeleWest Communications Group Plc., a joint venture between Telecommunication Inc. (TCI) and US West, have taken advantage of this opportunity to invest, operate, and assist in the operation of CATV/telephony in the... View full abstract»

Capital investments by network providers to develop broadband access for the information superhighway have inherent risks. Nevertheless, potential rewards to telephone companies, cable TV companies, and others for serving the end consumer in an expanding information economy make such investments a business imperative. This article focuses on the incumbent terrestrial access providers, the telephon... View full abstract»

Broadband networks to support a diverse combination of media and services present two interrelated challenges to the designers: how to devise the proper network architectures to efficiently deliver information, and how to realize the control and software infrastructure for end-to-end support of broadband applications. The new networks and applications that represent the future of interactive digit... View full abstract»