U.S. telecommunications research has yielded tremendous direct and indirect returns.Notable payoffs from U.S. investment in telecommunications research and related areas in recent decades include the following: The Internet, which realized a new communications paradigm, introduced a new, highly flexible network architecture and protocols, and ultimately enabled myriad new applications and services;Radio-frequency communications technologies for cellular systems and wireless local area networks, which have enabled modern mobile voice and data communications;
Optical networks, which have revolutionized communications by providing extraordinary communications bandwidths at very low unit cost; and Voice over IP (VoIP), which provides voice communications with enhanced flexibility and efficiency and has provided opportunities for innovation in applications beyond those provided by the public switched network.
There are many promising avenues for telecommunications research, and renewed U.S. investment would yield major dividends, as indicated by the following possible results:
An enhanced Internet architecture that goes beyond incremental improvements to deliver capabilities such as greater trustworthiness in the network core and in customer networks, improved addressing and routing, and end-to-end quality-of-service provisioning;More trustworthy networks that can better cope with the rising frequency, sophistication, and severity of attacks and the complexities and interdependencies associated with the convergence of voice and data networks;
Telepresence and telecollaboration environments that reproduce at a distance a local space with the fidelity needed to allow people to work in concert;Public safety networks that offer greater mobility, interoperability, adaptability to harsh and changing conditions, and increased resiliency to damage; and Adaptive and cognitive wireless networks that enable higher-performance communications and more efficient use of radio spectrum, allowing them to provide capabilities that rival and complement those associated with wired networks.
More info: telecom sector
