Comprehensive overview of telecommunications, including current status and future directions. Topics include review of evolution of telecommunications; voice and data services; basics of signals and noise, digital transmission, network architecture and protocols; local area, metropolitan and wide area networks and narrow band ISDN; asynchronous transfer mode and broadband ISDN; and satellite systems, optical communications, cellular radio, personal communication systems, and multimedia services. Examples of real-life networks illustrate basic concepts and offer further insight.