Border crossing

On the eve of Telecom 99, Telephony travels outside its traditional realm to study technological influence in a foreign land.

People in telecom like to invoke the image of blurring lines. It's typically used to describe either the phenomenon of converging networks - voice and data, wireless and wireline, local and long-haul - or the amalgamation of the technologies that support those networks. But it also can have regional connotations.

Communications technology is not limited by borders. The network and service developments occurring in North America are being mirrored to varying degrees all over the world. So as the telecom industry prepares to blur its own lines at the largest and most regionally comprehensive trade show there is, we decided to give you a profile of some of the world's technology hotspots.

As we planned our itineraries, our mission was to compare and contrast. Is there a place, for example, where third generation mobile wireless is less talk and more action - a place that would provide a gauge against which we could measure the progress of the North American wireless carrier? How are cable operators in different parts of the world tackling the complicated task of upgrading their systems to handle telephony and data? What kind of political and regulatory hindrances do alternative service providers face as they try to deploy advanced technologies in other countries?

Our travels took us far and wide, sometimes in person and sometimes virtually. Nancy Gohring, our roving Wireless Editor, explored Asia to survey its air interface situation and its impact on 3G network development. News Editor and cable junkie Vince Vittore studied the uptake of telephony and data transport on the cable systems of Western Europe. This editor surveyed the Latin American region to find a tenuous state of deregulation that appears to make the area ripe for fixed broadband wireless deployment by competitive providers. And we dispatched our veteran of foreign coverage, International Editor John Williamson, to gauge the state of advanced wireline technology implementation in Central and Eastern Europe.

The purpose of providing this travelogue goes beyond a desire to add to the international aura created by Telecom 99. By encapsulating the experiences of some service providers and equipment developers in foreign lands, we hope to provide our North American readers with a way to learn from the technological successes and failures of their foreign counterparts. In an environment where an obscure operator of undersea fiber can become one of telecom's hottest commodities practically overnight, it can't hurt to keep up with what is going on around the world.