New Services such as for Internet data and multimedia applications, have caused a fast growing demand for broadband communications. The fundamental technologies for the integration of these services have been developed in the last decade: optical communications, photonic switching, high speed local area networks, Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), ISDN and B-ISDN, Internet packet networks and mobile communications. The development was possible through the dynamic progress in communication and computer technologies and through worldwide standardization activities within ITU-T, the ATM Forum,...

New Services such as for Internet data and multimedia applications, have caused a fast growing demand for broadband communications. The fundamental technologies for the integration of these services have been developed in the last decade: optical communications, photonic switching, high speed local area networks, Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), ISDN and B-ISDN, Internet packet networks and mobile communications. The development was possible through the dynamic progress in communication and computer technologies and through worldwide standardization activities within ITU-T, the ATM Forum,...