Technical Writing for Paul Budde Communications

Telecommunications consulting in Australia and for global markets. Telecommunications resources, references and papers. 

Robin Whittle January 2007

Paul Budde Communications - http://www.budde.com.au - is an Australian-based telecommunications consultancy and publishing company which provides several thousand detailed, up-to-date reports on a vast range of telecommunications subjects.   These reports are used by a large international customer base, including governments, carriers,  equipment suppliers, investment bankers and companies who use telecommunications services.

Most of the reports focus on companies and countries, with highly specialised information on particular aspects of specific telecommunications markets.  For instance, if you want to know about  telecommunications in Afghanistan, in Zimbabwe or about the government telecoms market in Australia (Federal, Vic, ACT), there are reports on these subjects.  These reports are available for immediate purchase and download at the above site.  The full list of reports is: http://www.budde.com.au/documentlist.html .

While most of the reports are of a commercial nature, some are technical briefings on particular technologies.
 
I wrote the reports which constitute the Telecommunications Technology Library.  These technology reports are not concerned with sales figures and projections etc.  Their purpose is to explain the technical principles and key implementation details of particular telecommunications technologies.  These reports aim to:

• Introduce the key concepts of particular technologies, often including an historical background and a discussion of future prospects.
  
  
• Address the needs of non-technical readers - though user familiarity with the Internet is assumed, and explanations use basic concepts of bits, bytes, Hertz (cycles per second) etc.
  
  
• Address the needs of technically adept readers for whom the subject it outside their field of experience, or which has changed and grown so much in recent years that they need an overview in order to re-orient themselves.
  
  
• Enable the reader to understand the technologies and related market developments in order to aid his or her ability to evaluate the prospects and understand the context of the investment, product development or service procurement project they are working on.

There is a great deal of material available on the Net about telecommunications technologies.  Sifting through it and making sense of it is a major undertaking.  Much of the material is out-of-date, hard to understand (sometimes even for specialists) and overly-narrowly focused.  Quite a lot of it is written by people who have a direct commercial interest in the technologies, so it is often a way of boosting the perception of one company's technology.  The Budde.com.au reports are the work of researchers who are independent of the technologies and companies they write about.  

A special note to telecoms investors:

Whether you are considering buying shares in a listed companies, developing your own project, or committing yourself financially to someone else's, these reports are intended to help you make the right decisions.   The stock market is a casino and there is a long history of companies with dodgy technology, trumping up their claims and impressing venture capitalists sufficiently to part with millions of dollars.  A favourite ploy is to get a recognised columnist to rave about  the potential of the new technology.  A few years later, there's not much left!

There are many potentially promising business proposals and investments in telecommunications - people love to communicate and are clearly prepared to pay to do so in an increasing variety of ways.  But there is a danger that the technically inexperienced investor may be too-easily convinced of the merits of a particular proposal.  

While dedicated consulting services, such as from Paul Budde Communications, other consultants or myself are the best way to sanity-check any proposal you may be considering, these reports are intended to enable you to understand the various technologies and their applications.  These reports won't make you an engineer, and they are not written as investment advice - but they will enable you to develop your own, well founded, critical perspectives on the projects you are considering becoming involved in.

For instance, if you are considering investing in Broadband over Powerlines (BPL - AKA Powerline Communications - PLC) you will find the three BPL reports a good reality check on this technology. 

The main page for these technology reports is:

http://www.budde.com.au/reports/Category/Telecommunications-Technology-Library-170.html

I wrote the 63 reports (January 2007) listed below.  These reports are are available for individual purchase.  Larger biennial reports, based on these reports, are also available.
 
 - Robin Whittle

To the telecommunications consulting and technical writing page.

Data Communications Technologies
  Introduction and Frame Relay
  ATM
  Networks Within Buildings
  QoS, MPLS and VPLS
 
Digital Broadcasting and Video Technologies
  Audio-Visual Coding 1 - MPEG 1 and MP3
  Audio-Visual Coding 2 - MPEG 2 AAC and Video
  Audio-Visual Coding 3 - MPEG 4 Video and VRML
 
  Digital Broadcasting 1 - Trends and Frequencies
  Digital Broadcasting 2 - Television - DVB and ISDB
  Digital Broadcasting 3 - Television - ATSC and Middleware
  Digital Broadcasting 4 - Sound and Narrowband
  Digital Broadcasting 5 - Mobile

Internet and TCP/IP Technologies
  Internet - several reports currently being updated

  IP - IPv6, Multicasting and VoD - new material currently being prepared

  Web Development  1 - HTTP Basics    
  Web Development  2 - HTTP Proxies, Cookies, WebDAV & Web Services    
  Web Development  3 - HTML Basics    
  Web Development  4 - HTML 4-01 & XHTML    
  Web Development  5 - Cascading Style Sheets & DOM    
  Web Development  6 - Webfeed, Podcasting & Client Side Scripting    
  Web Development  7 - Ajax Pages & Applications    
  Web Development  8 - Server Programming    
  Web Development  9 - Frameworks & Content Management Systems    
  Web Development 10 - File Formats, Web 2-0 & Futures


Mobile Communication Technologies
  Mobile 1 - 2G - Introduction & IS-136 TDMA
  Mobile 2 - 2G - IS-95 CDMA & GSM
  Mobile 3 - 2G - GSM SIMs, SMS, CAMEL & HSCSD
  Mobile 4 - 2-5G - MMS, WAP, GPRS, SAIC & EDGE
  Mobile 5 - 3G WCDMA
  Mobile 6 - 3G CDMA2000 & Fixed-Mobile Convergence

Telecommunications Infrastructure Technologies
  Infrastructure - Key Concepts    
 
  Infrastructure - Last Mile 1 - Twisted Pair, POTS, ISDN    
  Infrastructure - Last Mile 2 - Fibre - FTTP, Passive Optical Networks    
  Infrastructure - Last Mile 3 - Fibre - Metro Ethernet, GPON    
  Infrastructure - Last Mile 4 - ADSL Principles    
  Infrastructure - Last Mile 5 - ADSL & ADSL2 Technical Standards    
  Infrastructure - Last Mile 6 - Symmetrical SHDSL, VoDSL    
  Infrastructure - Last Mile 7 - FTTC, VDSL Principles    
  Infrastructure - Last Mile 8 - FTTC, VDSL2 Technical Standards    
  Infrastructure - Last Mile 9 - HFC - Principles, DOCSIS 1-x & 2-0    
  Infrastructure - Last Mile 10 - HFC - DOCSIS 3-0, Switched Digital Video    
  Infrastructure - Last Mile 11 - Free Space Optical    
 
  Infrastructure - Long Distance 1 - Fibre, WDM    
  Infrastructure - Long Distance 2 - Fibre, Modulation, Amplification and 40Gbs    
  Infrastructure - Long Distance 3 - SDH SONET OTN RPR GMPLS    
  Infrastructure - Long Distance 4 - Microwave, Satellite
 
  Broadband Power Line 1 - Architecture and Techniques    
  Broadband Power Line 2 - Standards and HomePlug PLC    
  Broadband Power Line 3 - OPERA, DS2 BPL and Co-Existence    
  Broadband Power Line 4 - BPL Access Systems    
  Broadband Power Line 5 - Interference and Challenges

  Infrastructure - Networks - Network and Calls
  Infrastructure - Networks - SS7 PABXs Centrex CTI Number Portability

Wireless Technologies
  Wireless - Broadband 1 - RFID and 802-15 ZigBee    
  Wireless - Broadband 2 - Bluetooth    
  Wireless - Broadband 3 - Ultra-Wideband    
  Wireless - Broadband 4 - 802-11 & HiperLAN    
  Wireless - Broadband 5 - 802-11 QoS, MIMO & Propagation    
  Wireless - Broadband 6 - 802-11 Applications & VoWLAN    
  Wireless - Broadband 7 - 802-20, LMDS and Mesh Networks    
  Wireless - Broadband 8 - 802-16 WiMAX PHY    
  Wireless - Broadband 9 - 802-16 WiMAX MAC