Dawn of the Era of the Telecommunications Session
A fundamental change is underway in how real-time communications occur. The advent of the Telecommunications Session is a revolutionary concept that promises to change the basic nature of electronic communications. The power of the session is just becoming apparent and the effects of this innovation promise to ripple across business and life.
The difference between a session and a phone call is stark. In yesterday’s connection-oriented circuit-switched world of telecommunications many great things were possible. Highly reliable communications networks were constructed spanning the globe. With the advent of digital communications technologies the bandwidth capacity in both public and private networks increased at rates similar to those described in the semiconductor world by Moore’s Law. Over time it became common place for massive amounts of data communications and early forms of multimedia to traverse traditional networks. Packet-switched technologies were the next major evolution becoming employed first in the carrier networks and then spreading to the edge of the network with VoIP and IP Telephony.
The Session represents one of those seminal points of critical mass that occur when years of innovation suddenly coalesce into something brand new. Up until now we have communicated with the same fundamental principals as the child’s game of stringing two tin cans together. Although occurring over very sophisticated electronic networks, what in essence we were doing was creating a virtual wire between endpoints. This was great for reliability but it made multilayer experiential communications such as video teleconferencing complex and expensive.
The Session changes everything. Different from a connection oriented call, the Session uses layers of protocols and combines applications to create an experience that can be described as similar to that of using a web browser. In the same way that you point your web browser to a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) and access many different forms of information, telephone numbers and URLs become almost synonymous allowing the Session to link diverse forms of information with the phone call.
As in web surfing where you might visit a page that has perhaps pictures, text, live action video, links to resources external to the current page and many more elements in a single experience, the Session allows new forms of information to accompany the traditional communication. Distinct from earlier attempts to combine multimedia with voice, the protocols underlying the Session allow for dramatic new combinations of real-time communications and information with great efficiency.
For most of us the smart phone represents an approximation of the experience of the Session. Although rudimentary in perspective to what is possible, the ability to use an application that can identify, for instance, the closest Thai restaurant, give you the Zagat rating, let you see what other people have had to say about their experiences and, with the click of a button, dial for reservations is an early example of the qualitative improvement that the Session will create in our lives.
More powerful future applications will come with a geometric adoption curve that will make Mr. Moore blush.
With my focus for public safety communications, I dream of the day soon when not only will someone in trouble be able to dial for help and speak their circumstances, their session may include not only up to the second highly precise information about where they are located and other potentially life saving information. Examples may include: relevant medical history that the person has granted permission to access, a map, street view photos and perhaps even real time video of the location from nearby security or traffic cameras. There will be almost unlimited additional elements of valuable information that will be possible speeding effective response to emergencies.
I hope that you will join me in optimistically looking forward as the era of the Telecommunications Session dawns.
Related discussions:
The Promise of NG9-1-1: The Session Revolution 2 September 2009
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Posted by Guy Clinch at 17:58 on November 17, 2009