Telecommunication is the exchange of signs, signals, messages, words, writings, images and

sounds or information of any nature by wire, radio, optical or other electromagnetic systems.[1]

[2]
 Telecommunication occurs when the exchange of information between communication participants
includes the use of technology. It is transmitted through a transmission medium, such as over
physical media, for example, over electrical cable, or via electromagnetic radiation through space
such as radio or light.[3][4][5][6][7][8] Such transmission paths are often divided into communication
channels which afford the advantages of multiplexing. Since the Latin term communicatio is
considered the social process of information exchange, the term telecommunications is often used
in its plural form because it involves many different technologies.[9]
Early means of communicating over a distance included visual signals, such as beacons, smoke
signals, semaphore telegraphs, signal flags and optical heliographs.[10] Other examples of pre-
modern long-distance communication included audio messages such as coded drumbeats, lung-
blown horns, and loud whistles. 20th- and 21st-century technologies for long-distance
communication usually involve electrical and electromagnetic technologies, such as telegraph,
telephone, and teleprinter, networks, radio, microwave transmission, optical fiber,
and communications satellites.
A revolution in wireless communication began in the first decade of the 20th century with the
pioneering developments in radio communications by Guglielmo Marconi, who won the Nobel Prize
in Physics in 1909, and other notable pioneering inventors and developers in the field of electrical
and electronic telecommunications. These included Charles Wheatstone and Samuel
Morse (inventors of the telegraph), Alexander Graham Bell (inventor of the telephone), Edwin
Armstrong and Lee de Forest (inventors of radio), as well as Vladimir K. Zworykin, John Logie
Baird and Philo Farnsworth (some of the inventors of television).

Contents

 1Etymology
 2History
o 2.1Beacons and pigeons
o 2.2Telegraph and telephone
o 2.3Radio and television
o 2.4Thermionic valves
o 2.5Semiconductor era
 2.5.1Transistors
 2.5.2Computer networks and the Internet
 2.5.3Wireless telecommunication
 2.5.4Digital media
 3Key concepts
o 3.1Basic elements
o 3.2Analog versus digital communications
o 3.3Telecommunication networks
o 3.4Communication channels
o 3.5Modulation
 4Society
o 4.1Economic impact
 4.1.1Microeconomics
 4.1.2Macroeconomics
o 4.2Social impact
 o 4.3Other impacts
 5Government
 6Modern media
o 6.1Worldwide equipment sales
o 6.2Telephone
o 6.3Radio and television
o 6.4Internet
o 6.5Local area networks and wide area networks
 7Transmission capacity
 8See also
 9References
o 9.1Citations
o 9.2Bibliography
 10External links

Etymology[edit]
The word telecommunication is a compound of the Greek prefix tele (τηλε), meaning distant, far off,
or afar,[11] and the Latin communicare, meaning to share. Its modern use is adapted from the French,
[7]
 because its written use was recorded in 1904 by the French engineer and novelist Édouard
Estaunié.[12][13] Communication was first used as an English word in the late 14th century. It comes
from Old French comunicacion (14c., Modern French communication), from Latin communicationem
(nominative communicatio), noun of action from past participle stem of communicare "to share,
divide out; communicate, impart, inform; join, unite, participate in", literally "to make common", from
communis".[14]

History[edit]
Further information: History of telecommunication

Beacons and pigeons[edit]

A replica of one of Chappe's semaphore towers

Homing pigeons have occasionally been used throughout history by different cultures. Pigeon

post had Persian roots, and was later used by the Romans to aid their military. Frontinus said
that Julius Caesar used pigeons as messengers in his conquest of Gaul.[15] The Greeks also
conveyed the names of the victors at the Olympic Games to various cities using homing pigeons.
  In the early 19th century, the Dutch government used the system in Java and Sumatra. And in
[16]

1849, Paul Julius Reuter started a pigeon service to fly stock prices between Aachen and Brussels,

a service that operated for a year until the gap in the telegraph link was closed.[17]