Classroom Companion: Business

3.3 
 Service Integration over the Internet
The success of providing voice communications over the Internet is related to the 
development of voice coding standards referred to as voice over IP (VoIP). 
Development of these standards begun in 1995 by Microsoft and Intel and in 1996 
by ITU. During the early 2000s, VoIP providers proliferated. The largest applica-
tion of VoIP two decades later is over 4G and 5G mobile networks. 4G and 5G 
mobile networks offer only packet switched Internet connections for all services, 
and circuit switched applications are no longer offered in the latest generations of 
mobile networks.
It also turns out that the Internet is an excellent network for providing many 
different types of services. The TCP/IP protocol stack enables the offering of dif-
3.3 · Service Integration over the Internet

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ferent services with different requirements to quality-of-service. The flexible 
addressing scheme of the Internet also enables worldwide transfer of data. The 
open nature of the Internet enables a wide range of services that use the Internet as 
a communication platform, including web browsing, voice and video communica-
tion, messaging, gaming, banking, and information retrieval. Hence, the Internet is 
technical capable of offering most—if not all—services that have previously been 
transported over different dedicated networks.
In 2021, it is evident that the traditional telecommunications infrastructure is 
soon to be replaced by only two networks: a cellular mobile Internet and a fixed 
Internet, both offering the same services. The difference between them is the way in 
which the users are connected to the network. In the cellular mobile Internet, the 
users are connected via 4G or 5G land mobile networks or via low Earth orbit 
(LEO) satellite systems (see the example in 
7
Sect. 
3.4
). In the fixed Internet, the 
users are connected via cables or optical fibers. The major difference between these 
networks is the bandwidth: it is simpler to offer wideband data via optical fibers 
than over wireless connections. 
.
Figure 
3.1
illustrates how this convergence has 
gradually taken place during the last 30 years. The conversion process is illustrated 
by the arrows from the fixed telephone service and broadcast service to the mobile 
and fixed Internet services. The arrows are plotted against technological evolutions 
either triggering or enhancing the process.
Since GSM was put into operation in 1991, the fixed-telephone service has 
gradually been replaced by the mobile telephone service. While the number of sub-
scriptions of mobile cellular services has tripled between 2005 and 2018 globally, 
1990
2000
2010
Internet
Telegraphy
2020
Fixed telephony
Mobile telephony 
TV Broadcast
Radio broadcast 
Mobile VoIP