Telecommunication systems

Telecommunication is a general term for a vast array of technologies that exchange information and messages, over significant distances, for the purpose of communication. A complete telecommunication arrangement is made up of two or more stations equipped with transmitter and receiver devices. A single co-arrangement of transmitters and receivers, called a transceiver, may also be used in many telecommunication stations.

Mobile phones, land lines, satellite phones and voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) are all telephony technologies -- just one field of telecommunications. Radio, television and networks are a few more examples of telecommunication.

In modern age of electricity and electronics, telecommunications involved the use of visual signals, such as beacons, smoke, semaphore telegraphs, signal flags, optical heliographs and teletypes, the use of radio and microwave communications, as well as fiber optics and their associated electronics, plus the use of the orbiting satellites and the Internet, or audio messages via coded drumbeats, lung-blown horns, or sent by loud whistles, for example.