General (Telecom network)

Q1. (a) Communication can be categorized into two. i.e. Public and Personal
communication. Explain the characteristics of each.

Public Communication means people like to flock together and enjoy. Example
radio, TV, newspapers, websites etc. A person will not be upset by requesting
other person’s newspaper to read. Public communication is essentially a
unidirectional and there is no strict method of verifying the information. The
author of the service will carry his views.

Personal communication means a person will interact with another person to

update his knowledge. Example chatting, gossiping, talking, telephone
conversation. A person will be upset if he gets to know somebody is tapping into
his telephone calls. Personal communication is essentially a bidirectional and the
information can be verified instantaneously. Another characteristic of personal
communication is it is interactive. If you ask a question from another person you
will not wait for a minute for his answer. Letters or e-mails are also a personal
communication method but with delayed interaction.

(b) Telecommunication is a powerful tool of personal communication. Why is it

powerful?

Say you are visiting a friend going in a taxi. At the friend’s location you find he is
absent. You have wasted your time as well as your taxi fare. Are you going to ask
the taxi man to refund the taxi fare since your target was not achieved? No

Imagine in the telephone network a similar situation. Customer A dials customer

B. Customer B can be 100 kms away or 1000 miles apart. When B’s telephone is
ringing all the telecom equipment from A to B is utilized but the customer is not
there to answer. Can telecom operators charge this call? No
That’s why the telecommunication is a powerful tool. If a call subscriber does not
answer there is no charge.
(c) How do you nameplate each communication node? (Numbering of a
telecommunication terminal)

There are more than 2 Billion telephones in the world. One customer in one
corner of the world can contact another customer in another corner of the world
with a matter of a second. How to achieve this?

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 It is similar to human’s name plating. The names will identify the humans to
interact with another human.
Example John Smith
He will be called John in his village or town but if he goes out of his town or
country his name will be evolved to John Smith since there can be many Johns in
that environment. Similar situation exists for telephone numbering. Telephone
numbering will have 3 components in general. These components are as follows
Country code- 1 to 3 digit numbers provided by ITU (Internatioanl
Telecommunication Union)
Area Code: 1 to 3 digit numbers provided by the local regulatory authorities.

Individual telephone number: Can go up to 15 digits including country and area

codes (in the multi operator environment major significant digit will be allocated
for each operator by the regulator).
In addition to above numbering the acess codes will be introduced to differeciate
the calls within the local area to outside local calling area or outside the country.
For example certain countries use a outside local calling area as 0 in addition to
above area code and individual number. 00 will be used as access for
international dialing in addition to the country code, area code and individual
number.
The telephone network will have the following major elements;
1. Geographical location of the customer
2. Access network
3. Local switch/s
4. Domestic Transport Network
5. International Gateway
6. International transport network
7. Other country’s Domestic Transport Network

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 LE
4

3 IGW 7
LE 5

2 IGW 6

LE
1

IGW

a. Briefly explain the above elements.

Telephone network is similar to a distribution network. Assume a person is
visiting A’s house to collect a parcel to be transported to B’s house. Assume A
and B are far apart and A is in civil district 1 where B is in civil district 10. If the
civil districts are further divided into towns A’s location is in TATown and B’s
location is in TB Town. A person who is collecting the parcel from A’s house will
bring the parcel to the TATown depot. At this depot he will check whether the
parcel has to be delivered with in the TATown. If it is not he will deliver this
parcel through a van (assume) to the district depot of TA namely D1. At D1 he
checks whether the parcel has to be delivered within D1. IF not he will send
thorough a lorry all the similar parcels to the highest civil depots namely
Provincial. At the Provincial depot A he will check whether the parcel lies within
his province or outside. In this case outside and he will collect all the parcels and
send through a container to a Provincial depot of B. From the Provincial depot B
the parcel will follow through district depot D10 and through town depot of TB
to the B’s house through a similar messenger who has collected the parcel.

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 In the telephone network the above delivery system is similar except once it is
established from A to B it is bi-directional interactive transmission. By
understanding the above phenomena access network means the messengers
collecting and delivering parcels from A to TA and from TB to B. In telephone
network this is normally a pair of wires and maximum can reach about 10 km.

Local Exchange is analogues to the local depots similar to TA and TB.

Domestic Transport- Consists of the network which the parcel has gone from TA
to TB. For simplicity this will be shown of interconnection of all local exchanges.

International Gateway- The parcel example given above is only for domestic
application. If the B customer is overseas the parcel will be delivered from
province 1 to the airport which will air transport to the required country and the
same phenomena that has been explained from provincial P10 to B customer will
be followed. Hence in the domestic transport Internatioanl Gateway will be
available to interconnect telephone calls to international.

International transport network- All International gateways will have access to

each other in order to allow customers to direct dial from one country to another
country. This will be achieved with international transport Network such as
Satellites and in the modern days optical fiber cables. Hence international
transport network will be simplified to a line diagram of interconnection
between all international gateways,

Other Countries Domestic Transport Network- is similar to the explaination

given for Domestic Transport Network only difference maybe depeding up on
their civil administration districts the terminology that has been adopted above
such as town, district, province may differ with the same concept.
b. Domestic transport network includes how a call is routed via many hierarchical

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 Telephone exchanges. Explain in detail the characteristics that you can find in a
hierarchical switching network in Sri Lanka.

Local Exchange is the lowest in the hierarch and called primary switch. Next
hierarchical exchange will be district exchange and called secondary switch. Next
hierarchical exchange will be Provincial switch and call as tertiary switch. The last
hierarch will be the international gateway.
c. Telecommunication is no longer a monopoly. Almost all the governments in the
world are liberalizing telecommunication industry. In Sri Lanka too there are
three fixed line operators with four mobile operators and with 30 external
gateway operators are shouldering the responsibility of telecommunications
service. Under this scenario interconnection plays a vital role for a healthy
service provision to the customers of many operators. Modify the above
schematic diagram to achieve the healthy interconnection between operators
giving special reference to the fixed line operators. Briefly explain how the
interconnection is achieved.

There are 2 major factors to be considered here. One is how to interconnect all the
dometic networks of other operators. Second how to interconnect all
international operators to all the domestic operators. Normally domestic
operators who have license to operate internationally can have one
interconnection exchange (depending upon traffic and areas, the numbers can be
many). These interconnection points will hand over both domestic and
international calls that has been received by one operator to the other operators.
Normally the operator who requests a service of termination a call to the other
operators network has to pay terminating charge to the other operator.
The external Gateway Operators does not have license to operate domestic
network. Hence External Gateway Operators will be have interconnection to the
International Transport Network and will interconnect with the license domestic
operators of a given country. Same concept of interconnection charges will
applied with the EGOs. The diagram is as follows.

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 EGO A .. 32
.International
Gateway Domestic
Transport
Network of all
other operators
Domestic who have license
Transport Internationa to operate
l Gateway
Network of Exchanges international also
Operator A

Internationa
l Gateways
of all the
operators

Internationa
l Gateway
of operator
A

Q3. The connectivity of one telephone customer to another telephone customer is

achieved by the following 3 technical sections, which is a basic part of a telephone
network.
1. Outside line plant
2. Switching
3. transmission
(a) Explain the physical demarcations and technical functions of each section.

(b) What is the function of the Main Distribution Frame (MDF)? Draw a
sketch (line diagram) of an MDF that you have seen and explain the
merits.

Q5. (a) 60% of the cost of telephone network is attributed to outside line plant. This
involves digging by the side off the roads, ducting, concreting, installing
manholes, drawing cables etc. The length of a pair of wires and its resistance will
play an important role in the proper functioning of a telephone line. What are the
technical limitations that you have to be careful with respect to the outside line
plant?

(b) Today’s voice communication will evolve to data communication tomorrow.

In Sri Lanka too, this evolution is taking place. Introduction of (Integrated
Services Digital Network) ISDN and ADSL (Asynchronous Digital Subscriber
Line) is one example. Explain briefly ISDN and ADSL, and the limitations of
outside line plant with respect to these services.

Q6. The access network can be either copper or radio (DECT – Digital Enhanced
Communication Technology, CDMA – Code Division Multiple Access). Explain
briefly the merits and demerits of each of radio in comparison with copper.

Model answers to the above questions will be uploaded in due course.