Chapter 5. Enterprise Telephony Applications

In the previous chapter, the technologies of legacy voice network systems were discussed. Some might find that subject fascinating enough to have spent more than a chapter on it. In fact, there are volumes on the subject, and the ITU web site (http://www.itu.int) is filled with papers that describe it all in painfully unsparing verbosity.

But it's telephony , the application functionality within the voice network, that is the fun part. Telephony accommodates and assists human interaction in a very real, personal way, which is why it's such an engaging subject. Unlike written forms of communication, such as email or instant messaging, telephony's distinguishing traits are its use of sound and its immediate, real-time nature. It's a much more fundamental mode of interaction than the written form—because when we use telephony, we talk, the same thing we do when we're together.