![]() Witness Netflix, which using Internet distribution, successfully competes with cable access to the home – a business that was deemed an impregnable monopoly.įor the next big development, we go to our fifth breakthrough: ubiquitous two-way consumer wireless communications. The Internet has left few industries alone. So the modern Internet was born, and we have witnessed thousands of new companies since the late 1990s that have leveraged its capability to provide new services that now dominate our economy, such as, Google and Facebook, to name a few of the most successful. The Internet had its roots in the idea of communications networks based on digital data packets provided with headers for addressing and moving through computer routers that read their destination addresses and moved the packets to their destination through multiple hops.įiber-optic links combined with high-speed processing chips at routers enabled gigabit networks that had not been practical with prior copper-based transmission lines. It took years of development but by the 1990s multi-gigabit fiber-optic systems were being deployed globally – enabling the Internet, our fourth communications breakthrough. This data-rate limitation was overcome in the 1970s by fiber-optic communications technology, which used light transmission through thin glass lines, with lasers providing the light pulses. ![]() This brings us to our third communications technology breakthrough that eventually solved that problem. So a key enabler of Intel’s growth was the fact that ever larger computer communications networks linking ever more powerful computers were being built, thus creating a demand for increasingly powerful Intel data-processing chips.īut the long-distance data-carrying capabilities of networks was being limited by the available technology that relied on copper or coaxial transmission lines. Through its innovative endeavors, Intel created the integrated-circuit market, and its microprocessor chips were increasingly valuable in large part because of their use in growing digital communications networks of increasing data-carrying capacity.Īgain we see the impact of communications on business development. The business plan was about one page long and defined no specifics. A team of scientists, including former Bell Labs people, saw the market opportunity opened by digital circuits and founded Intel. The invention of the transistor at Bell Labs in 1948 opened the digital computation era and led to all subsequent communications innovations that relied on computer operation.īut it took a team of brilliant innovators to go to the next stage of exploiting the transistor value in computation. I think of this momentous invention as the offspring of the telephony industry, since it was funded through the profits of that industry. Its monopoly position and consistent profits allowed the company to conduct long-range research, and the transistor was one of the results. The company was responsible for decades of innovative contributions through Bell Labs research and its many service subsidiaries. Telephony set the stage for numerous new businesses and services, but an important consequence was the consolidation of the industry.īecause overlapping competing telephony networks were ruinous, to ensure national service AT&T was established as a US monopoly. The second big communications breakthrough was the telephone that was introduced in the 1870s. The first electronic communications system was the telegraph link developed by Samuel Morse and demonstrated in 1844. In addition to enabling rapid long-distance personal and business communications, the telegraph lines along railroad tracks revolutionized the ability to synchronize train traffic over big networks.Īs big railroad networks proved their economic value, their construction generated investment booms that lasted decades as railroads in the second half of the 19th century proliferated around the world.
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