Category Archives: Telecommunications

Information Management and the Theory of Everything

Information Theory was fundamental to NTL's work on digital compression in the early 1990s and also key to me being able to design and produce this industry guide using the early versions of Photoshop and Quark

The first time I became aware of the work of Claude E. Shannon and the landmark paper on Information Theory he published while working at Bell Labs in the 1940s was when I worked for NTL’s Advanced Products Division and had to try to understand the principles of digital video compression to promote the company’s innovations in digital broadcast technologies.

Shannon’s Information Theory was absolutely fundamental to the encoding, transmission and decoding processes used to make digital broadcasting a reality. It also became clearer to me at that time that Information Theory sat at the heart of everything I was involved in following the transition from analogue content creation and publishing processes to digital processes, that had begun, for me, with the desktop publishing revolution in the late 80s/early 90s and continued with the arrival and growth of the web.

Information Theory however is concerned with the mechanics of communication and the quantity and readability of the information transmitted. It is not concerned with the quality of that information, its meaning or its importance. For those processes we have what has become known as Information Management – as defined here by AIIM – a practice that has been going on in shifting forms for many decades now.

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A mobile phone mast in a box

It’s that time of the year again when the great and the good of the world’s mobile technology industry gather in Barcelona for the Mobile World Congress . So far this year, there have been plenty of images of Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer and Nokia’s CEO Stephen Elop getting cosy (rather fitting that the first day of this year’s event falls on Valentine’s Day perhaps) as well as the usual parade of the latest and greatest smartphone technologies.

As in previous years however, there are other less glamorous announcements but ones that could make significant differences. In a couple of previous posts going back to 2009, I made comments about the impact of molecular level electronics and how the really useful innovations in energy reduction were happening within the very power-hungry networks themselves. Continue reading →

A Cartorcycle? – WOOT! (before 2020 please)…

I’m not particularly materialistic and hardly ever feel the need to have the latest and greatest gadget – be that a big expensive gadget like a car or a small one like a phone. And when I do invest in something, you can be sure that pragmatic practicality, robustness, economy and value for money are top of the list of considerations. So it is a rare occasion when I see an item, or the concept for one, and think – I really, really ‘Want One Of Those’.

With my current interest in the automotive industry and the gathering pace of innovation that currently surrounds it, I have researched and reviewed many different automotive ideas during the last 18 months or so. One that has stood out particularly is the increasing convergence of the car and motorcycle.

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Finding a new mountain to climb

“When Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept for there were no more worlds to conquer.”

My Niece very bravely played hostess to the family over New Year at her place in Crystal Palace – a hilltop suburb of London that gives excellent views of the city skyline.

The NTL/Arqiva transmitter near Croydon - one of a number of amazing structures and facilities I was privileged to visit and, on a few occasions climb, when I worked for the company in the 1990s

I know the area quite well from my time in the broadcast industry in the early 1990s as it is home to two significant structures that have played key roles in broadcasting history – not just in the UK, but worldwide too. On the site of the original Crystal Palace stands the Crystal Palace transmitting station and a few miles down the road stands the Croydon transmitting station. I visited these stations quite a bit during my early days with NTL as they were often a focal point for the demonstration and launch of new digital broadcasting and telecommunication services . It was always fascinating to get an inside view of these amazing structures and the operations centres that sat beneath them and also to talk with the engineers who maintained the analogue services and were key to developing and implementing the new digital ones.

As mentioned elsewhere on this blog, my experiences working for Lucent’s mobile/3G operations at the beginning of the century echoed those in the broadcast industry as it was during those pioneering days when there were many possibilities with what the technology could achieve but some very big mountains to climb to get there .

So, sitting in my Niece’s front room after the New Year’s celebrations were done and dusted, thoughts turned to what all those activities had led to 20 years on in broadcasting and 10 years on in the mobile web. Continue reading →