Today's Environment Requires Taking a Systems Approach to Communications

Communications News, Sept, 1984 by P. Wexler

The economic realities of the 1980s have made communications an indispensible tool for increasing productivity, profitability and competitiveness. Deregulation makes the benefits of private communications ownership both possible and desirable. Advancing technology offers more-effective ways to conduct business while reducing costs through applications such as videoconferencing and electronic mail.

Indeed, the deregulation and technological growth of the last decade have made the telecommunications industry a crowded place to do business--whether buying or selling. There are so many suppliers offering so many different (yet similar) products that confusion often seems the most-prevalent market condition.

Systems suppliers are capable of meeting a broad range of needs by customizing existing products and services, and by using different technologies to meet specialized and specific communication needs.

The differences between product-oriented and systems-oriented suppliers is key to determining the total cost and actual value of communications investments. Therefore, these factors have become critical as corporations move to gain the economic benefits offered by private ownership of communications.

Deregulation makes private ownership of communications equipment a cost-effective approach for government, institutions and most large and many smaller businesses. Private ownership through outright purchase or new lease/ purchase arrangements provides tax benefits, long-term cost savings and greater control over system design and operation. In short, investing in communications equity rather than renting communications facilities can save money--lots of it.

Deregulation has also led to the development of numerous economical long-distance and bypass communications options. Private satellite networks, public and private packet-switched data networks and numerous long-distance services all offer savings for specific applications. However, at the same time that deregulation has opened the door to new long-distance savings, it has also spurred an increase in the cost of local leased trunk lines used to connect local networks to long-distance services. This has created a market for a number of "bypass" technologies and services, while making it essential for businesses to use their existing leased lines as efficiently as possible.

Private Satellite networks that offer reduced long-haul point-to-point communications costs, for example, must be connected to local voice and data networks to provide a high-quality pathway from the satellite downlink to the user's desk. Packet-switched networks offer reduced long-distance data transmission costs but also require local networking of data communications in order to get the data to the packet-switched lines as economically as possible. Thus, in order to reap the benefits of deregulation while avoiding its costs, corporations must now improve the quality of their local voice and data access pathways.

In addition to the new economic advantages available through deregulation, and the resulting "wide-open" marketplace, a key advance in local-loop technology now makes it possible to gain substantial savings in voice and data communication: the integrated voice/data PBX. With its revolutionary ability to switch voice and data independently, and to transmit voice and data simultaneously across standard twisted-pair phone lines, the integrated PBX saves users money by increasing the effectiveness of local-loop-to-long-haul connections. Through the integration of voice and data, the new-generation PBXs have solved a longstanding communications dilemma.

Until recently, PBXs were voice-only devices. Data communications may have been switched on some PBX trunks, but the PBX switch treated data the same as voice traffic. Because data used voice capacity within the switch, it degraded the switch's voice capabilities, thereby reducing the number of calls that could be handled at any given time. This data-induced degradation of switch capacity and capability made it virtually impossible to use the PBX as the basis of a local network for data. Thus, PBXs were used to switch voice, and high costs were incurred to install specialized data lines or local-area networks. There were no savings in the local loop, nor any feasible way to produce savings. Integration of Voice and Data

This communications dilemma, the need for two separate and mutually exclusive local-loop systems, has been largely solved by the integrated PBX. Through various approaches, PBXs introduced in the last year have gained the ability to switch data without degrading voice performance, and to transmit both voice and data on the same standard twisted-pair phone lines. Both of these abilities are critical factors in the integration of voice and data on a single system.

For example, GTE's Omni series of PBXs uses two new technologies. The first, known as the dual-bus architecture, allows voice and data to share switching facilities. The second, known as the mini-packed protocol, allows voice and data to share local transmission facilities. Together, these technologies provide a comprehensive solution to integrated voice and data communications.