ionTEL Switching Plan

In the early days, phone calls traveled as analog signals across copper wire. Every phone call needed its own dedicated copper wire connecting the two phones. That's why you needed operators' assistance in making calls. The operators sat at a switchboard, literally connecting one piece of copper wire to another so that the call could travel across town or across the country. Long-distance calls were comparatively expensive, because you were renting the use of a very long piece of copper wire every time you made a call.
Beginning in the 1960s, voice calls began to be digitized and manual switching was replaced by automated electronic switching. Digital voice signals can share the same wire with many other phone calls. The advent of fiber-optic cables now allows thousands of calls to share the same line. But fiber-optic and other high-bandwidth cables haven't changed the basic nature of circuit switching, which still requires a connection -- or circuit -- to remain open for the length of the phone call.
This chapter will cover the switching methods and equipment that ionTEL will utilize in whole design.