Coupling the PSTN and the Internet telephony worlds
Coupling of voice and data communication systems (perhaps
unification of these formerly separate worlds).
Driven by a number of features:
- emergence of ISDN
- emergence of B-ISDN
- "phone" programs for placing long distance calls across the internet
- exploding Multimedia computing market
- therefore, nearly all new PCs have audio input and output (highend
ones even have video input and output)
- OS and other support for audio is becoming standard
- more and more multimedia information being broadcast, pointcast, ...
LAN(s) provide the local interconnections between the various types of networks
no more PBXs!
