Broadband Access Technologies

Rating:
Summary: an excellent technical overview of broadband
Review: As the move of the internet towards broadband becomes ever more obvious, "Broadband Access technologies" is a wonderful book that will teach you how these technologies work.

It goes through xDSL, cable, fiber, HFC, satellites, LMDS, MMDS, next generation internet, ATM vs IP and lots more.

It will tell you how these technologies work, how they compare with each other, what the costs involved are, what the regulatory framework is and could become. It is a one stop book, as you don't have to go through a book on each of these tecnologies.

It can be easily inderstood by a non telecom engineer (as myself) who wants to understand the battle going on in the tech world

Rating:
Summary: Skims on Details
Review: I found the book to be a good high level view of most of the broadband technologies offered, but it skimps on details of different protocols and fails to even mention line rates of technologies such as T2, T3.

Good for someone who wants in intro to Broadband, but not for a serious developer in the field.

Rating:
Summary: Thick and thin on a whim
Review: This review is for non-techies flirting with getting deeper into the tech side. Despite the low rating, the book is worth purchasing. Be prepared for spots of derailing detail that will likely throw the casual reader off track. Other areas are too thin, probably due to the author's assumptions that the reader is already up to speed. The kiss of death for this book is the spelling and grammar. I used this book in a summer capstone course in FSU's interactive communication master's program. My students were the first to point out the book would have been handed back ungraded for a rewrite. Is there an editor in the house? The publisher blew this one; don't blame the author.