Telecommunications-Related Information Services the User’s Point of View

Summary

In many countries the PTT’s have introduced new non-voice services. Most of them to face unexpected difficulties, the worst of which laying in non-technical problem areas.

For the end-user telephony is an integral, rather uncomplicated information service with clear possibilities, limitations, costs, benefits and protocols. In most cases one single supplier is responsible for maintaining a good quality of the entire service.

Non-voice telecommunication services are mostly just an element in a more comprehensive information service, which, in the end-users perception, is much more complex. Very often the quality of each element is well-defined but nobody seems to be responsible for the overall quality of the whole.

This paper sides with the user’s viewpoint on new telecommunications-related information services, identifying a few problem areas and discussing which approaches could be appropriate there.

A connected series of links passing through each other, or otherwise joined together, so as to form a strong but flexible ligament or string. (The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, Clarendon Press, Oxford).