Rating: 
Summary: This is the one book you MUST have
Review: Since it was published, I have used this book as the text in my graduate course in networking and telecommuncications management. This book is the perfect combination of high-level concepts, sufficient explanatory detail and access to an online site rich with additional resources, including current updates keyed to the chapters. Students from a wide variety of backgrounds, computer science, management and engineering have found this book understandable, current and easy to understand. Over the years, I have used many different texts, some very detailed, some very verbose, and most extremely expensive. None them provide me with what, in this book, I feel is the most comprehensive and forward-looking treatment of networking and telecommunications yet accomplished in a single volume
Another significant feature of the book is that its author is an internationally acclaimed author and presenter and the creator of the eLearning series. This is a magnificient multimedia course covering all of the topics in the book. The visuals are stunning and the coordination between the audio, visual and textual presentation is flawless.
The book, web site and multimedia series is very highly recommended
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Overview of Telecommunications
Review: Telecommunications Essentials is a superb introduction to the larger field of telecommunications. The text is a rather lengthy book, with numerous illustrations and an expansive glossary, that can be read from cover to cover. The author does an excellent job of covering virtually every part of the telecom infrastructure, including POTS, fiber optics, residential broadband and wireless.The real difficulty in writing a book like this is deciding to what depth technical material should reach. The author does do a good job of describing some rather complex subjects without resorting to material requiring a formal technical education. Numerous diagrams aid in the readers understanding of the material. The comprehensive glossary also facilitates the learning process. Seldom does the author delve into detailed mathematics or the physics of propagation. Interestingly, she does describe coding schemes, which is important. There are some technical mistakes, however. In one very odd example, the author confuses femto- with peta- in which she describes "femtobits per second" Fbps. This is repeated, which makes one question the accuracy of other material and quality of the editing. Since there is no detailed description of hardware, circuits or semiconductors, this book is not for engineers. Rather if you are an investment professional or management consultant working in the area of telecommunications, it will provide a broad overview of telecommunications technology. The text is packed with the lingo of the industry. It also does a good job of explaining the basics of transmission and architecture. However, since it is geared more towards the marginally technical businessperson, it seems that there would be more mention of the players and the relationship between them such as IXC's, CLEC's, and RBOC's. Moreover, there is little mention of economics, which has been of great interest in the past four years as many notable bankruptcies and over-investment have made headlines. What it is lacking... It suffers from stale data due to the rapidly evolving telecom space. It appears that much of the information is current as of 2001. This leaves many of the recent developments in wireless out of the book. It appears that the author doesn't yet realize the dominance wireless will have in the marketplace. Moreover, discussion of the growth of fixed line-of-site and NLOS technologies are really not discussed. Also, there is little explanation of HFC. Lastly, there is no sections on OSS or billing, which are quite important as far as the industry is concerned. Despite the shortcomings, the book was an excellent read. I haven't come across another similar text, so it is quite hard to provide a comparison. The broad coverage makes the book at good starting point for entry into the telecommunications industry. Clearly, to get a better understanding of the specific components of the telecom infrastructure, one must reference other texts.
Rating:
Summary: The title says it all!
Review: The field of telecommunications is one of those seemingly endless black holes, filed with ambiquity, wrong turns, too many questions and not enough answers, widely divergent opinions, and somewhat intimidating technical (and sometimes mundane) mechanics. This author manages to deal head on with the telecommunications industry, not shrinking from her responsibilities to tell the whole story, and allowing the reader, finally, to find some clarity of vision and understanding of what telecommunications is and where the industry could be headed.
| 
