Telecommunication trend in the first half of this century and its impact on information society

This paper deals with telecommunication trends in the next decades. First of all, trends in microelectronics technology as predicted by SIA in their roadmap will be presented. Based on ever shrinking geometries of solid state devices and ever decreasing size of telecommunication equipment, the number of telecommunication subscribers will add up in the next few decades, until in average every man on earth has a mobile phone. The demand for higher bandwidth leads us to the use of optical fibres in networks around the world. This trend also boosts equipment development, as we will see in another part of this paper. Coding will be in future very important. By telecommunication we get the feeling that we live in a small village. Telecommunication is the most effective vehicle to reduce the gap between industrialised and developing countries.