BBC FINAL TRANSCRIPT
Copyright © 2002 The Open University
T305 - DIGITAL COMMUNICATIONS
AUDIO TRACK 6
PROGRAMME TITLE:
A Word Without Wires
OU CASSETTE NO:
3131
DIRECTOR:
Ian Black
PA:
Helen Lowery
DURATION:
Approx. 30 minutes
MAIN CONTRIBUTORS:
NAME:
TITLE (Job/Company etc.)
Winifred Robinson
Presenter
TRACK 6
A Word Without Wires
Winifred Robinson
This is track 6, A World Without Wires. Bluetooth, is a short range radio technology,
designed to smooth wireless data communications between devices such as
laptops, PDAs, cell phones printers and so on. Swedish telecom manufacturer
Ericsson, pioneered the technology in the mid 1990's, but since then, hundreds of
other developers and manufacturers have signed onto the standard. It's taken
longer to get Bluetooth products out the door, than its promoters had expected. But
as of mid 2001, PC cards and other devices were finally beginning to ship in
quantity. In track 6, we'll be looking at the development of Bluetooth, and asking the
question, will we really be living in a world without wires. The following is a
programme broadcast on Radio 4 in 2001, and it was presented by Peter Day.
Peter Day
Once heard, never forgotten. Bluetooth is a memorable name, and if you haven't
heard of it yet, you will do soon. Bluetooth stands every chance of being the next big
thing.
Man
Here's a new technology that's going to reach penetration rates of five times the
size of the internet, in the next five years. I mean this stuff is literally going to be
everywhere. Your car, your home, your office, as you move about, Bluetooth is
going to be everywhere.
Man
It is going to be huge, over the next five years. We're expecting two billion Bluetooth
chips to be shipped by two thousand and five.
Peter Day
It's not just chips, Bluetooth is setting a new standard, for the way in which
machines communicate with each other, across very short distances, up to ten
metres. In the room of a home for example. It sounds pretty limited, but it's a
system brought to the market by an alliance of thousands of minds from hundreds
of companies, all over the world. Some of them fierce rivals, in hot pursuit of a big
new idea.
Man
The world is going for open standards, and speed, and that's what we are trying to
combine, to create an open standard and get acceptance, and do it with great
speed.
Peter Day
If the advocates of Bluetooth are right, we're about to enter a world, where computer
speaks to phone, and oven to fridge, and car to garage, and it all happens without
wires, and without pointing an infrared device in the right direction like a TV
controller. The Bluetooth concept is simple, that the impact on the way we work and
play, may be a large one.
2
Man
The concept of unconscious communications is one of the key underlying
assumptions within the Bluetooth initiative. But it's more fundamental than that
because, technology's been conceived to be extremely low cost, extremely small,
so it can be embedded within almost any electronic device you can imagine. For
those reasons, ultimately it could proliferate and become a very major industry in its
own right.
Peter Day
I'll explain what all these people are talking about in a minute, and we'll also hear,
that some experts are sceptical about whether it will work, quite as well as intended.
But here's an example of Bluetooth in action. I'm in a room holding a portable
computer, one of those tiny things they call a palm top. Using a cheap Bluetooth
radio chip as the connection from the computer to the phone system, my little hand
held device, effectively turns into a mobile phone, with a wireless connection, that
reaches out across the room. Instant connectability, and cheap too, listen.
Man
Here we have a Bluetooth telephone. The palm device with a voice clip on, if I just
click on there, it brings up a telephone number, lift the handset. So now we've got a
Bluetooth call out, to the public network, and actually coming out on a telephone
speaker there. So this is your first Bluetooth telephone call that you've listened to.
Peter Day
That, is quite impressive.
Yes it works, that was a demonstration for me just the other day by Graham Carter,
from a new company called Red M, based in a little nest of hi-tech firms near
Slough in the Thames valley. Bluetooth addresses a rather simple problem, wires.
Now that computers are everywhere, so are wires. Cables that need plugging, and
unplugging and winding up, wires that make using a computer or even a mobile
phone stop and start, cumbersome. With the rise of the internet, wires have been
getting in the way of everyday communicating more and more. The engineers
started thinking about wires, at the Swedish mobile phone giant Ericsson, in 1994.
Eventually, they devised a system, a specification, that would take wires out of
many uses in the home, and in the office. In the ancient university town of Lund in
rural southern Sweden, Ericsson has based its inventive mobile phone business. It's
booming so much, that the sleek new labs and office blocks just months old, are
already flanked by prefabs, so fast is the growth of the industry. Stephan Svedburg
shows me round.
Stephan Svedburg
If you look at this floor, you can find a lot of the software engineers and hardware
engineers working at Bluetooth, and in this particular room, we do a lot of testing.
So here, we have all the future versions of the technology that we are trying out right
now.
Peter Day
This phone book over here, is this is the Bluetooth specification, the heart of the
matter.
Stephan Svedburg
3
Yes that's actually, only a part of the specification but, yes it is the specification of
Bluetooth. It's sixteen hundred pages full of test and diagrams, describing all the
details, but also some hints on how to do applications.
Peter Day
So this is the thing around which everything else revolves.
Stephan Svedburg
Yes, this is where you find the truth of Bluetooth, and how to do all the small details,
and the important thing here is to get the details right, because, one small error, or
one misinterpretation, and you don't get the inter-operability.
Peter Day
Inter-operability, machines that interact with each other across the room. That's the
thing that makes Bluetooth so compelling an idea, as expressed by Stephan
Svedburg, the manager of software and standardisation, of Ericsson's Bluetooth
operation. The essence of Bluetooth, is not the chips or the software that makes it
possible, but those sixteen hundred pages of specification, that create the standard,
and the complex detailed plans, for the new communications medium. Now when
Ericsson's engineers had got a long way with devising and creating the Bluetooth
standard, they did a curious thing. They gave it away to the world for free, creating
what they hope is the global standard for very short range wireless communication,
by offering it to all comers, even deadly rivals such as the Finish mobile phone giant
Nokia. By convening what they called a special interest group, including some of the
biggest names in world computing, Ericsson tried to insure that this was the one
defining global standard. and to make it ear catching for consumers as well as
engineers, they named the standard, Bluetooth, after the tenth century king Harold
Blatand or Bluetooth, who pacified the Danes, and united them with the
Norwegians. But why did Ericsson give this technology idea away.
Stephan Svedburg
I think what you need is a single idea, so you know what to do, and then.
Peter Day
Coherence around that.
Stephan Svedburg
Coherence around that, having a lot of people going for the same goals, so if you
can achieve that which I think we have done with Bluetooth. I think that is even
more powerful.
Peter Day
It's a very interesting business model though isn't it? I mean you've got a lot of brain
power at work on this thing.
Stephan Svedburg
We've really got a lot of brain power to work on this thing, right now we have almost
two thousand companies working on this, especially nine companies driving it.
Peter Day
and people coming at it from all over the place. So you have, airlines involved in
ways of making their planes lighter, and people building much more simple
applications like, the wireless headset. So, the ideas are coming from all over the
known world?
4
Stephan Svedburg
Yes, when you think about having this short wireless link, you can do quite a lot of
the new application, about everything.
Peter Day
But it's a fascinating business plan when people say, we don't know quite what the
applications are going to be, let's put it in the marketplace and find out. This is quite
different from the old big brother corporate control of an organisation.
Stephan Svedburg
Yes but at the same time, we knew the first application, and that's what driving it into
the market, you need to have a couple of applications to do that.
Peter Day
The tie has to be right.
Stephan Svedburg
The time has to be right, the technology has to be right, and you have to have the
first application.
Peter Day
and that first Bluetooth use, the wireless link between the body of a mobile phone,
and the headset, will be in the shops near Christmas. Still at Ericsson in Lund, and
as Ed Lund is the marketing director of Bluetooth, which now has almost two
thousand companies from all over the world, lined up to exploit the idea, in whatever
way they can think of. This extraordinary concentration of effort, explains why
Ericsson shared its technology with the world, in a way that must run counter, to
normal corporate instincts.
Stephan Svedburg
You see that more and more these days, because [inaudible] have solutions sell
them, becomes very wise, but there are exceptions of course, Microsoft for
example. But, generally speaking, to have a success and benefit, I think you will see
more and more open systems and I think that's a little bit depends.
Peter Day
It becomes a way of creating a band wagon, that everybody can jump on so the
total market becomes so large.
Stephan Svedburg
Exactly, exactly, the pie gets bigger, and hopefully you can maintain the [inaudible]
and percentage wise but, it's the biggest slice.
Peter Day
But the idea is that it should come down to a chip, costing a dollar or two dollars,
something really very cheap compared with the total cost of nearly any component.
Stephan Svedburg
Yes exactly, that is the idea, and that's been the design criteria from the beginning,
to make it possible to integrate a basically a communication chip for a dollar a few
dollars in any kind of device, from a mouse to a, cellular phone or whatever.
5
Peter Day
So as far as the consumer, the uninterested customer in any high street in the world
is concerned, this thing is going to appear, in a month or two, and then, become
ubiquitous, become everywhere, faster even than mobile phones caught on.
Stephan Svedburg
Yes I think so and, of course if we have succeeded the consumer will never notice
the Bluetooth functionality that it really has worked, and that's the ultimate goal.
Peter Day
Because if it works, you're going to make a lot of people in a lot of companies, rich.
Stephan Svedburg
Yes, but it certainly will help many small companies to form a new business. It will
give many new business possibilities to many small and big companies so yes, it
will make some people rich too I'm sure.
Peter Day
Though some of the companies which are exploiting Bluetooth are famous
international giants, many are new and almost unknown. Cambridge silicone radio
for example, is a business only two years old, which has enormous ambitions. CSR
is based in the now rather bulging Cambridge science park, where its founders
have used twenty years of previous experience in a variety of communications
technologies, put together a Bluetooth communications device, on a single silicone
chip, which they hope to be supplying in vast quantities, very soon pretty cheap
about ten pounds. Glen Collinson is one of the founders of Cambridge silicone
radio, a company which thinks it's solved many of the tricky technical problems,
created by putting buzzy radio frequencies, and sensitive computer wiring, side by
side, on a tiny chip of silicone. One of the important things about Bluetooth, he
thinks, is how it begins to make using computers, almost invisible for doing some of
the very ordinary things of everyday life.
Glen Collinson
[inaudible] as a businessman be in a conference, meeting people, and normally, we
go there and we exchange business cards with each other so that we have each
other's contacts afterwards. Bluetooth is a technology that will make that process
unconscious. So, the scenario would be, every businessman has a portable
computer or a person with digital assistance, and those PDAs are exchanging
business cards information, unconsciously with each other.
Peter Day
A whole room full if necessary.
Glen Collinson
In indeed a whole room full yeah.
Peter Day
What was special about what you aimed to do right from the start. Because, a lot of
people were involved in Bluetooth right from the beginning, and therefore could
easily have had exactly the same idea as you, maybe in established companies.
Glen Collinson
6
The key special thing that CSR offers, is the ability to combine on one single
silicone chip, all of the functionality and technology needed to make the Bluetooth
radio a reality. So many other companies are out there now developing their own
versions of the technology, their own versions of the implementation, but no one to
date, has been able to combine everything on to one silicone chip.
Peter Day
But you knew it couldn't be very expensive, if you didn't have the luxury, or your aim
was not to have the luxury, of a huge profit margin per chip, you weren't buffered by
that. This was a mass product from the very beginning.
Glen Collinson
That's right, that was key to everything that we've set out to do here at CSR which
was to build a company that could ship, millions of devices, millions of silicone chips
rather than just thousands, and thereby become one of the, potentially one of the
major new semi-conductor companies in the world, it really is as big as that.
Peter Day
How many chips are you going to sell, millions, millions and millions, or billions
yourself?
Glen Collinson
Well, our business plan at the moment, is showing that we'll be selling tens of
millions of chips within the next couple of years, and beyond that, if we can maintain
our lead, by continuing to innovate, and it's not unrealistic to expect to sell hundreds
of millions within a three to five year time frame.
Peter Day
But it's interesting that it's you, a small team, not the big mobile phone companies
with their thousands of researchers, who have got this particular lead.
Glen Collinson
Yes, that's interesting, and I think, a quote from silicone valley perhaps is relevant
here. The question should not be, can the small beat the large, the question is, can
the quick beat the slow, and of course the answer is yes.
Peter Day
Glen Collinson, marketing director of Cambridge silicone radio. We heard earlier
from another new Bluetooth company, Red M of Slough. They've produced a coffee
percolator size computer, a so called server that sits on a desk, and communicates
with other Bluetooth enabled devices. So here I am, back in Slough, standing in a
room right in the middle of a Bluetooth network. Simon Gaun of Red M describes it.
Simon Gaun
What we're trying to do, is provide with inside of a building, or inside of an office,
inside of a car dealership, or even inside of a hotel room, or an airport lounge, the
ability to access information, over a wireless connection, where ever you are.
Peter Day
But people will say, oh it hasn't been that fiddly to plug myself, my computer, in
when I'm travelling, to a point in the airport lounge for example, it hasn't been that
fiddly to do.
7
Simon Gaun
Well, as a frequent traveller, it is a very big problem. I was in for instance
Copenhagen yesterday, and there were no phone connections available, and where
it was very urgently required for me to get my E-mail, I was unable to do that. If I
could walk into the lounge, and not only get a connection from a laptop, but also my
hand held computer, it would make me so much more productive.
Peter Day
Now your server, how many signals can it cope with. A room full of lots of different
people doing lots of different things?
Simon Gaun
Well the Bluetooth specification allows you to have up to seven active connections.
Now what we've also got is a way of extending the network, to larger environments,
with this access point.
Peter Day
This is a, this is a thing that looks like a sort of shaving, it's the box that you put an
electric shaver in.
Simon Gaun
Well it's designed to be very appealing, you're absolutely right. and what you do with
this, in a very large environment like an airport, you can imagine the size of
Heathrow, you'd literally dot thousands of these around the airport. So literally every
area of the airport would have access to Bluetooth. So you can imagine a scenario
where you step off a seven four seven from the U.S., and instantly, as soon as you
come out of the plane, you turn on your hand held computer, instantly get a
connection over Bluetooth onto the internet. You can get your E-mail, you get up
dated messages. If you're say going to take out a car rental, you could even get
messages from the car rental service, saying, hello, welcome to Heathrow airport, I
see you're now at gate thirty two, it's going to take you twenty minutes to clear
customs, we'll have that car ready for you. We're offering special upgrade services.
So for an extra five pounds a day, you can upgrade to a Jaguar for instance. You
can click yes on the hand held, and eventually you could even say type in your
destination, and we'll have a map ready for you.
Peter Day
Now that's quite an interesting example of how this little thing, just taking the wires
out of the connection, starts people thinking about the business opportunities, all
over the communications chain.
Simon Gaun
Absolutely, so you've got this close co-operation inside of the Bluetooth special
interest group. Between the developers of the technology, and the users of the
technology, and that's rapidly expanded the number of possibilities that we're
looking at.
Peter Day
Simon Gaun of Red M, the subsidiary of Maj networks, which won the innovation
prize at the Monte Carlo Bluetooth conference in the summer. Beating great bit
companies such as Toshiba and Ericsson. Long established companies are also
being swept up in the race to put Bluetooth into use. Imagine cars, with the cables
taking out, there'd be huge savings. In Finland Ericsson's great Nordic mobile
8
phone rival Nokia, has been thinking about the impact, of a home without wires.
Listen to Hano Narjus, from Nokia.
Hano Narjus
What we see at the strategic evolution, is to be able to introduce new types of
appliances, and also more importantly, new types of services, which we have not
even seen imagined yet, and that is enabled, by introducing this whole network.
Peter Day
So, until now we've kind of had internet access or, connections. I mean, who will
talk about the internet in the future, it'll just be another connected up thing won't it.
But we've had this, in a special place, you've sat down you logged on all this kind of
thing. Now in Finland you have this vision of people being almost permanently wired
up to communications. you walk you talk, where ever you are in the world, and
there's enough intelligence there to log you into whatever you want to be logged into
without thinking about it.
Hano Narjus
That's right, so this always on now become possible. So, then, you can start to
receive your E-mails where ever you are, you can have location based services as
you are always on, and the network can follow the path that you are taking.
Peter Day
and with this in mind, that people, given access to this thing will use it, the
assumption is, more and more and more, yes. Yes yes.
Peter Day
An enthusiastic Hano Narjus director of sales and market creation, a nice title, at
Nokia home communication in Helsinki. and I have to say that the fins I've met, do
seem to have some deep understanding, of the way mobile phones change the way
we move through the world. Still in the home, the international household appliance
company whirlpool, wants to add Bluetooth communications to its ovens and
fridges, and washing machines. Gustavo Manarchi is the director of electronic
business, for whirlpool Europe, based in northern Italy.
Gustavo Manarchi
The way we see that in the services that we are developing, is that we will have an
internet enabled refrigerator, and that refrigerator will be able to do shopping for
you. So it will be able to keep track of your inventory, will be able to order your
groceries, will be able to tell you through you mobile phone, what you have in your
fridge. The washing machine, will be also web enabled, will allow you to, go through
the process of identifying what's the right programme, to get rid of a certain stain, for
a certain fabric. and if your washing machine, hasn't got the right programme, the
machine will be able to connect to the internet, look if the programme is available,
and download it to your machine. But it will allow us to build a direct link, a direct
relationship with the consumer.
Peter Day
So people are buying your knowledge on how to clean stains in fabrics, as well as
the machine itself.
Gustavo Manarchi
That's a possibility yeah.
9
Peter Day
I mean I think this is fascinating that product manufacturing companies are
becoming service companies, transformed by the internet. The suggestion is, that
you'll be able to charge, a sort of recipe by recipe some of the things you send over
using Bluetooth to the oven or fabric, solution by solution. You'll be able to make
micro payments for these charges eventually so, you'll be feeding the stuff down on
a revenue generating basis, is that right.
Gustavo Manarchi
That's certainly an opportunity. We haven't defined yet, the structure of pricing and
charges for this product, but it's opening the opportunity for the subscription base,
their transaction base, or a fixed amount of charge, for having access to our
knowledge base for example. Then there are different ways to approach this, but
certainly something is clear, you know something is going to change.
Peter Day
Gustavo Manarchi from Whirlpool. But all new technologies have their detractors,
and I have also to report, that some skilled technical people have their doubts,
about the effectiveness of Bluetooth. Potential clashes with the French military
communication system, appear to have been resolved. But the radio frequency
Bluetooth uses, is the same one that's used by microwave ovens, a feature of many
of the homes that will want to use Bluetooth equipment. Back in Cambridge at the
Plextech communications consultancy, managing director Collin Smithers, says
Bluetooth has its limitations.
Collin Smithers
It is clear that, if you're using Bluetooth alongside other systems and, towards the
limit of its range, and then you turn the microwave oven on, the system will degrade.
It has been designed to degrade gracefully, so it won't simply shut down, but there
is a sharing going on.
Peter Day
There's always snags in these things. They look universal, they look as though the
solution is finally delivered, oh no it ain't.
Collin Smithers
The standard is trying to evolve very quickly, and there will be certain interoperability issues within itself.
Peter Day
You mean it won't work.
Collin Smithers
There will be standards of equipment, or families of equipment will work with each
other better than others, although they all have Bluetooth components in them.
Currently there are, events taking place called unplugged fest, where different
manufacturers are, literally testing with each other, just how well their equipment
built to the same standard will in fact talk.
Peter Day
Oh so they take along a lot of things with prototype Bluetooth attachments, and just
see what happens.
10
Collin Smithers
Correct.
Peter Day
The aim is that this is a pretty ubiquitous thing, that most of the products that have
wires in them, will one day not have wires, and it'll be Bluetooth that enables that.
Collin Smithers
Bluetooth is one standard which will achieve that. There are other standards which
will achieve it better in different situations. For instance if you go in to high street
stores now, you will see, that nearly half of them are digital phones, and they're to
the Dect standard, that this is domestic cordless phones.
Peter Day
So if we have a cordless phone at the moment doing what to a lay person, a user
will appear to be the same thing as Bluetooth is promising, Bluetooth doesn't
necessarily take away, that standard from an existing domestic cordless phone.
Collin Smithers
Not at all. There are multiple standards, also for more industrial high bit rate
wireless local area networks, other standards may be more applicable.
Peter Day
Because they work over further distances.
Collin Smithers
It may be distance related, or it may be data rate related, or the way it handles
interference.
Peter Day
This is very confusing because, all these people were jumping o the Bluetooth band
wagon, suggests, that it's going to be, the universal solution to, all kinds of
problems, sort of not ever so well defined perhaps. If you want to interconnect, use
Bluetooth, it ain't like that you say.
Collin Smithers
No it's not as simple as that, and of course, those people who have vested interests
in Bluetooth, would say that wouldn't they, but those who have interests in other
standards, also promote the upside of their standards, and it really is horses for
courses.
Peter Day
Collin Smithers, managing director of Plextech in Cambridge. Ericsson insist
microwaves won't disrupt Bluetooth equipment, so we'll have to wait and see. But
let's not get too carried away. We've had this hype about new technologies before,
and some of them have severely disappointed. Look at WAP phones for example.
Full of as yet unfulfilled promise about new information, plucked out of the air by
wireless application protocol. The question that has to be asked is, how big is
Bluetooth going to be, as the world's new short range wireless standard. Let's ask
the affable semi-conductor expert at the investment house Merrill Lynch, in London,
Andrew Griffin.
Andrew Griffin
11
It is going to be huge, over the next five years. We're expecting two billion Bluetooth
chips to be shipped by 2005, and that's because it will go into so many applications.
They'll be, most cell phones will have them, that's a billion or so, then there'll be a
doubling effect from the wireless headsets. Most PCs will have Bluetooth in them.
So there's going to be a massive volume market for these chips.
Peter Day
and it works does it, Bluetooth actually works.
Andrew Griffin
Yes, I wish you hadn't asked me that question. It certain work.
Peter Day
Is actually you know, it is actually a little bit fundamental.
Andrew Griffin
This is key, one of my worries is, that the technology will be put out too early, rather
like WAP, which is a lovely technology, but the underlying speed at which you can
access data is too slow still. Now with Bluetooth it's being pretty hyped as you know,
it'll do everything for you, and while, I think the radio technology will work, we've
seen it demonstrated, that isn't an issue. What you do need is, for the two pieces of
equipment that are talking to each other must know what they are, and that means
that, the whole Bluetooth industry must write a lot of software, so that every possible
communication eventuality can be covered.
Peter Day
Otherwise the refrigerator starts talking to the printer for example.
Andrew Griffin
Quite, which would may be good, because it maybe a, maybe it's a print out of what
you need to fill it with. But you probably don't want your fridge talking to your car in
garage, I can't see that eventuality ever happening.
Peter Day
You're kind of suggesting, there may be a lot of awful experiences, or mildly irritating
experiences, as a result of this thing perhaps not being controlled enough that,
machines will interfere with each other, and if early adopters start buying Bluetooth
equipped stuff, and taking it home, it may simply be too early to refine it.
Andrew Griffin
Yeah I would firmly say they will not interfere with each other, that isn't the worry, it
is merely that the first Bluetooth phones, possibly the only Bluetooth function they'll
have, will be the Bluetooth link to the headset, and you may need to download
additional software, to communicate to the laptop. and what I'm hoping is that by the
time the market actually becomes a volume market, and I'm expecting this in fact
that, the software will already be out there. I will, I'm certain, that Microsoft will put
Bluetooth into Windows, which means that every PC, whether you know it or not will
have, the software necessary. So, as long as the PC itself has the Bluetooth chip in
it, your cell phone will be able to talk to it. Whether we know it or not, we will
definitely know that, more and more electronic devices are able to communicate
with each other without cables. It will, in ten years time, appear ridiculous, that you
had to connect your video recorder to your TV.
Peter Day
12
Andrew Griffin at Merrill Lynch in London. Big hopes are resting on Bluetooth. If it
really works, we'll never go back to wires. In ten years, fridge will talk to the
supermarket delivery service, and ovens and central heating will synchronise
themselves, so that the home comer is greeted by welcoming warmth, and
welcoming food. Cutting the wires, will change our lives. That anyway is what the
people behind Bluetooth really expect to happen. It's starting about now.
Winifred Robinson
Between the broadcasting of this programme on Radio 4 in 2001, and the making of
this track in 2002, the outlook for Bluetooth has waxed and waned, and is maybe
waxing again. Microsoft announced in April 2001, that they wouldn't after all be
integrating Bluetooth, with the first release of Windows XP. But now they're saying,
that a future release of XP, will include native support for Bluetooth. By the time
you've listened to the tracks in T305, it could all have changed again. But there's
little doubt, that the wireless world that motivated Bluetooth will come. Less certain,
is the extent to which it's carried by Bluetooth. Maybe the fanfare for king Harold
Bluetooth, ends up heralding someone else. That ends the last of the audio tracks
for T305.
Over the series of the six tracks, we've explored a wide range of influences, on the
development of communications technology. Social issues, like the fashions of
internet use, and the allegiances to football clubs, issues of standardisation like
Bluetooth, as well as the direct government intervention in the interests of national
security, or requirements of the universal service obligation. Government
intervention through the regulator, as in the unbundling of the local loop, and
commercial decisions, like the failure of fibre, to reach the home. and technological
innovations, like mesh networks, plus the digital encoding of television signals.
Similarly, you've heard how digital communications, are changing the world we live
in, through the internet, through mobile telephony, and through a universal service
of communications. In summary, we've explored digital communication in the wider
context, and you should be better placed to appreciate the causes and effects of the
technology that you study in T305. I'm Winifred Robinson, I hope you've enjoyed all
the tracks on T305, and good luck with your studies with the Open University.
[END OF TRACK 6]
13