Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Telecom Overview
Review: As an industry outsider with limited technical experience, I found this book informative, easy-to-follow, and entertaining. My compliments to the author for a job well done.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Telecom Overview
Review: As an industry outsider with limited technical experience, I found this book informative, easy-to-follow, and entertaining. My compliments to the author for a job well done.
Rating: 
Summary: a scatterbrained mess...
Review: First off, a word of warning: Pay heed to the reader's words from Woburn Mass, all of the 5 star reviews of this book actually are from people who are mentioned in the book's acknowledgements.I purchased this book mostly to learn about telephony. I already know a lot about data networking, and I wanted to expand my knowledge of other aspects of telecom and optical WAN technologies like SONET and SDH. I knew I was in for trouble after reading about 50 pages. Have you ever read a technical book where you had a really hard time absorbing the info, even when you re-read the same paragraphs over and over again? Well, chances are it's not your fault, it's the author's! I can say this for sure about this book, b/c it described stuff that I already know about, and after reading it, I was more confused than before! Part of the problem is the author's complete lack of organizational logic. On page 2, he describes all of the "techno-jargon" that permeates the telecom industry, and "often gets in the way of the relatively straightforward task of learning how all this stuff actually works". I totally agree, jargon should not obfuscate. BUT, if you're going to point out this common pitfall, you best avoid it yourself, and Shepard does not! He's all over the board, dropping terms and concepts with little or no explanation. About 10 pages in, it's already a muddled mess. The mess gets worse. He discusses all of these different approaches to multiplexing, but doesn't take the time to explain what the basic process of multiplexing is all about until page 200! Throughout the entire book, he constantly refers to switching versus routing, but he doesn't explain the basic processes until the final 2 pages! These are just a couple examples that stuck out in my mind. To be sure, there is some useful information to be gleaned here, but it's hard to sort out from all the "noise". Shepard gets into way too much detail on certain subjects and not enough on others, without any discernable logic. For example, he spends several pages discussing how fiber cables are manufactured, but spends less than one page discussing the basic processes of routing and switching. However, given the topic of the book, isn't the latter subject a lot more applicable? As far as I know, telecom professionals don't need to make the actual fiber cables. This book is too technical for someone who doesn't know anything about telecom, and it's not practical enough for someone who knows a lot. If you're in between like me, you stand to gain a decent high-level overview of the industry, but the details are murky at best.
Rating: 
Summary: Telecom Crash Course
Review: I've been telecom industry for fifteen years and always had a difficult time explaining to friends and non industry folks how the business works. This book makes sense of it all in easy and fun read for the professional and the new comer.
Richard Parlato
Rating:
Summary: The complete telecom overview
Review: If I were starting out in the telecommuncations field, this would be the first book that I'd recommend that anyone read. It gives you a high level look at: what protocols do and are used for; what the primary access technologies are; a great description of the telephony system that provides the main infrastructure of the Internet; and, the primary transport technologies that are being used today.
Because this is a "crash course" book don't look for great detail in every topic, however, if you are looking for a compendium that covers the telecomm field all in one book then this is the book you need. My networking background has been mostly in the copper and fiber optic technologies, so I found the sections about the new 802.11 wireless technologies the most interesting. But some of things that I found unique for a book like this and most fascinating are the pictures of scenes and equipment taken inside of actual telephone central offices and the anecdotes about real life happenings in the telecommuncations world. For those of you interested in the state of the telecommuncations industry, you may want to go straight to the last chapter entitled "Final Thoughts" where the author gives some very interesting comments about the industry on a global view.
So if you have anything to do with telecommunications, be it as a user, CTO, IT manager, technology student, technology teacher, marketing or sales person of telecom or buyer of telecom, then this book should have a place on your desk.
Rating:
Summary: Telecom Crash Course
Review: Steven Shepard has done a magnificent job of taking a very complex subject and making it simple to understand. I found his book to be an easy and painless experience, and his level of detail to be just enough for most of us to appreciate the subject without getting mired down in unimportant details. A great read - I highly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: Everything's here...you just have to find it!
Review: Telecom's Crash Course is an excellent compilation of all major facets of the Telecommunications industry. As someone who monitors foreign investments into the US technology sector, I've found this both an excellent primer for newbies as well as a very helpful resource to those who have been doing this for a while.
The PROS: The book is comprehensive and walks through the very tactical level, detailed explanation of specific technologies and the many ways that a given portion of data can move across the planet. If you're new to the field, reading this book is the cheapest and fastest method to be armed with a semi-comprehensive knowledge spanning the industry.
The CONS: I can see how people could say that this book gets lost in the weeds because the explanations are sometimes extensive, detailed, and probably don't fit the bill if you're looking for a book covering the overall trends present in the telecoms market. If you're looking for a "big concepts" book only, this isn't for you. Reviewers commenting on the book's lack of focus were probably hoping primarily for a "here are the major trends in the industry" and not an industry technology primer, a "crash course" in the industry.
Buy the paperback. It's a bit of a painful read in places, but hey, this is Telecoms, and it doesn't get too many people hyper excited--if you're buying a book called "Telecoms Crash Course" and expecting a nail-biting thriller, you probably have some misplaced expectations! Enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: entertaining but lightweight
Review: The author has a knack for seeing the big picture and coming up with funny metaphors to describe it (see Austrailian rules football in the other review). Also, he has a lot of friends in the business - four of the 5 star reviews below are from people listed in the acknowledgements. There is technical material here but the selection is sort of random, so you may or may not find a detailed explanation of a subject you're looking for. But his brief discussion of JPEG compression was so absurdly wrong it made me less enthusiastic about reading through the rest of his technical presentations. I won't say this book is worthless, because he does have a marketer's flair for making business sense of technology and predicting trends, and there is probably enough material here to fill a few good magazine articles. One of them, on the psychology of computer hacking (inserted in the middle of a discussion of the OSI protocol stack), unfortunately has nothing to do with telecom. Also, the mini-Esperanto/English dictionary is entertaining but probably should have been left for the author's web site. I mean, I agree that's funny, but there are those of us who paid for a book on telecom.
Rating:
Summary: Good writing + accurate information="must buy"
Review: The author of Telecom Crash Course, Stephen Shepard, is one of the most interesting, knowledgeable writers in the field today.
Drawing upon nearly three decades of personal experience and research, he manages to turn what could be a dreadfully dull subject into a scintillating story of science, history and data communicaion hardware. The content is up-to-date and well organized, the illustrations very appropriate and the index very thorough. Personally, however, I find Mr. Shepherd's sense of humor in the face of such weighty topics to be the best part of my reading experience. Who else could work Vinton Cerf and Douglas Adams into the same narrative? Mr. Shepherd uses ingenious metaphors to clarify difficult concepts, as he does in the excerpt below regarding conflicting world standards. "Many countries play football, for example, but the rules are all slightly different. In the United States, players are required to weigh more than a car, yet be able to run faster than one. In Australian Rules football, the game is declared forfeit if it fails to produce at least one body part amputaion on the field...They are both football, however.In data communications, the problem is similar; there are many protocols out there that accomplish the same thing." Mr. Shepherd manages to infuse what could be a terribly dry catalog of facts with cheerful, sometimes almost whimsical language that keeps the reader's interest throughout the most convoluted jungle of acronyms, jargon and obscure technical terminology. I found the information in this text to be clear, logical and very helpful in leading me to a better understanding of the highly important field of 21st century telecommunications. Buy this book, you won't regret it. Kenneth Wade
Associate Professor
Champlain College
Rating: 
Summary: Good Technology Introduction
Review: This book gave me good insights as to the different technologies, network topologies being used within the telecom industry. I would recommend reading this one. If you interested in the business side of things I would recommend Telecommunications Management by Nolan Vincent Jones. This book also provides some of this information but primarily works on the other side of the coin, from a business and managerial perspective.
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