Communication services

Due to the incredible increase in the amount of online services more advanced communication links have become available. These services are available to everyone with internet access and is of great benefit to organisations and governments. Rapid development in communication services over the past few years has led to the DfES reviewing the content and changing the title of the National Curriculum subject previously known as Information Technology (IT) to Information Communication Technology (ICT). This shows how central communication is in the Information Age.

There are many ways that people use the internet to communicate. Currently the most widely used way of communicating is Email. This subject is covered on the next page.

The other most commonly used medias are Instant Messaging (e.g. MSN Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger) which according to an article in the ‘Computer Weekly’ magazine is helping employees collaborate better in the workplace and is set to overtake email because of its real-time capabilities.

Newsgroups and 'egroups' (e.g. Yahoogroups) are forums for people who share the same interests. These services have brought people together, even creating new ‘virtual communities’. Blogs are personal websites, where people post their thoughts and comment on any subject that they wish. Anyone can view these; they are basically digital journals.

Video conferencing is another communication service, which in my opinion is a terrific innovation.

To the right is a picture of a video conference room:

The image was taken in a university in Sydney, the video conference room is being used for a lecture—this also shows how the communication aspect of the internet is being implemented in higher education. However at this moment in time there are quite a few technological constraints:

• A lot of bandwidth is needed (A very fast internet connection is required for good quality)
• Video conference technology is quite expensive.
• Interactive video conferences are limited mainly to special rooms.

Communication technology is developing fast, alongside the Internet. I am in no doubt that in five years time, all the communication services I have talked about will have been developed further and will be well on their way to being optimised to their full potential and made more widely available.

A lot of Internet service providers in the UK have started offering a VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) service to their customers. This service gives subscribers the fully computerised equivalent of a standard telephone line. This technology has been used for a few years by large organisations, but recently the ISPs have integrated it into their networks and now are starting to offer this service to home users. Nildram is an ISP offering this service to its customers. I have created a report about Nildram and its services to home users.

Click next to find out more about Email...