The Irwin Handbook of Telecommunications Management

"Without a doubt, this is the best book ever written on telecom management. If you're in it, you must have this book." ­­Harry Newton

Teleconnect Library

An ideal companion to The Irwin Handbook of Telecommunications The Only Book to Provide Managers In Any Business with Updated Information and Solutions for Today's Telecommunications Systems The Irwin Handbook of Telecommunications Management is renowned for covering every important telecommunications system management issue. Now comprehensively revised and updated for an increasingly complex telecommunications field, this classic resource provides hands-on techniques for understanding today's major technological changes­­and incorporating them into your organization's overall telecom strategy.

Topics new to this edition include:

• Techniques to integrate automatic call distribution equipment with the Internet. The emergence of competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs)
• The difference between incumbent and competitive LECs
• Internet service providers (ISPs) and how to evaluate and select them
• New technologies that allows employees to work from home
• Server and e-mail management
• Frame relay and intranet or virtual private network selection and management
• Internetworking equipment and services
• Firewall and router selection and management
• Management of data network bandwidth

The Irwin Handbook of Telecommunications Management contains many practical tools that you can use on the job. To make them more useful, computer versions are available to purchasers of this book through a special, dedicated Website. Download cost models in spreadsheet form and use them by inserting your own values. For call center load and trunking calculations, a program is included that can be run on any Windows computer.

In this era of rapid technological change­­from the Internet's ability to add value at every level of business to the critical decisions that must be made on whether or not to converge voice and data at the network level­­only one book provides invaluable reference material and information for every aspect of telecommunications. That book is The Irwin Handbook of Telecommunications Management, Third Edition. A vital resource for anyone involved in the telecommunications business, it covers the entire spectrum of 21st century telecommunications.

Organized into five sections, The Irwin Handbook of Telecommunications Management makes every important aspect of managing a telecommunications system easy to locate, understand, and implement:

• Part I is a comprehensive overview of telecommunications management, addressing issues including the Telecommunications Act of 1996, current and long-range planning, feasibility analysis, and forecasting.
• Part II discusses the selection and management of telecom equipment and services. Chapters examine management of Internet services, writing and evaluating responses to RFPs, managing long distance services, and more.
• Part III covers the management of a telecom facility­­including PBX and key telephone equipment, automatic call distributors, voice processing equipment, local area networks and Internets, wide area networks, convergence, and video and audio conferencing equipment.
• Part IV is about cost control. Besides offering specific techniques for effective cost containment, the chapters in this section cover benchmarking, contracting, outsourcing, and optimizing voice circuits and data network bandwidth.
• Part V puts it all together. From the development of a telecom operations and disaster prevention plan to project management, quality control, security and fraud prevention, and more, it provides a thorough examination of telecommunications operations planning and execution

Comprehensive in scope and concise in detailing the information that busy professionals need to know, The Irwin Handbook of Telecommunications Management provides complete, detailed coverage of the processes and procedures for getting maximum value from a telecommunications system. Managers in any industry can turn to it for authoritative solutions­­and as a necessary how-to manual­­for every telecommunications management question.

There has been several significant changes to telecommunications management since the last edition was published. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 has had a major effect on telecommunications management. Even though the second edition bears a 1996 date, it was written in 1995 and published before the act was passed. All chapters of this book will be updated to incllude the effects of this act. A second major change is the increasing importance of the Internet. In 1995 the Internet was just beginning to make its presence felt in large organizations. Today, the business world is being radically transformed by electronic commerce. The third edition of this book will be modified radically to include the additonal tasks this places on the telecommunications manager to cope with the rapid changes in the Internet. A third major effect is known as convergence--the merging of voice and data at the network level. Numerous vendors are producing equipment and services to enable voice and video to operate over data networks using the IP protocol. Much that is being written is little more than hype. One objective of this edition is to provide readers with a process for determining when it makes sense to intergrate the two. This completely updated reference book is the perfect book for anyone involved in the telecommunications business.