We explain what telecommunications are, its history and impact on society. Additionally, careers in telecommunications.

What are telecommunications?
When we talk about telecommunications, we refer to the science and practice of the transmission of information through electromagnetic means through the use of a set of specialized techniques and materials. Such information may consist of textual data, audio, video or a combination of all three.
The term telecommunications comes from the French word telecommunicationcomposed of the Greek prefix TV-, “distance”, and the Latin word communicate“share”. It was coined by the engineer and writer Édouard Estaunié (1862-1942) at the beginning of the 19th century, as a replacement for the term until then used for communication by electrical impulses: telegraphy.
Within the concept of telecommunications we can find numerous technologies today, from radio, television, telephony, computer networks and the Internet, to radio navigation, GPS and telemetry. In almost all cases, these are systems equipped with:
- An issuer. That encodes and transmits the signal through different media or channels.
- One or more receivers. They receive and decode the signal, and may in turn (or not) serve as transmitters.
- Repeaters, routers and switches. Which are devices designed to intensify, modify, channel or repeat the signal sent by the sender.
One can also speak of Telecommunications Engineering or, simply, telecommunications, to refer to the study of this type of technology, with a view to its management, improvement and innovation.
History of telecommunications

Human beings have tried to overcome distances to send and receive signals since very early times. To do this, he used smoke signals, instrumental sounds, human messengers or chains of fire signals.
However, only with the appearance of postal mail in its different versions, some older than others, a true communications system appeared at a distance. Generally it was aimed at communicating the king or the imperial metropolis, with its distant subjects or with its colonial territories.
For its part, The first rapid distance communication systems were created in the Modern Age when thanks to the mastery of electricity, a way arose to use it to transmit simple messages, generally limited to one word, through the telegraph.
Inspired by ancient optical versions that depended on encoding a message with symbols visible from a distance, In the first half of the 19th century, the first forms of the electric telegraph were developed revolutionizing the field of communications through Morse code.
This invention was consolidated in the following years as the great modern means of communication, especially in the United States, hand in hand with railway expansion. It served as the basis for future inventions, such as the “talking telegraph” (telephone) or “wireless telegraphy” (radio communication).
In the last decades of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century, the telephone was developed invention of Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922) and/or Elisha Gray (1835-1901). Furthermore, the experiences of scientists and inventors such as Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931), Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) and Aleksandr Popov (1859-1905) constituted a scientific and technological revolution in the area of telecommunications.
The invention of the first radio transmitter by Guillermo Marconi (1874-1937), gave rise to devices as diverse as the teletypewriter or the shortwave radio transmitter, and in the 20th century to transistor radio and television. Never have human beings managed to communicate so much and over such long distances as from then on.
Finally, after the invention of computers and their incorporation into information exchange networks, new technologies were added: modems, sonar, microwaves, telecommunications satellites, cellular telephony, WiFi and other contemporary modes of transmission of information. information digitized using electromagnetic waves.
Types of telecommunications

There are many ways to classify telecommunications, based on different elements. For example, we can distinguish between unidirectional communications, those in which the sender is always the sender, and bidirectional communications, in which the receivers eventually also occupy the role of sender, that is, there is feedback.
On the other hand, taking into account the nature of its specific technology, we can differentiate between:
- Radio communications. It not only refers to the transmission of AM and FM radio waves from commercial stations, whose programming must be retrieved by the public on their radio devices, but also to shortwave radio devices, such as those used for navigation and military communications.
- Telephony. Graham Bell's old wire telephony was replaced throughout the 20th century by an entire modern telephone industry, which uses satellites and broadcast towers to send and receive electromagnetic signals of specific frequency, which the device then converts into sound waves, recovering the speaker's voice with minimal distortion and delay.
- Television. The great invention that revolutionized mass media in the 20th century has survived, adapting to the times, through satellite broadcasts or streaming through the Internet, to bring both audio and images to the receiving devices in each home, whether live and direct, or delayed.
- Internet. Today practically everything is connected to the Internet, the great network of computer networks, which allows the reciprocal sending of information over enormous distances. It is an intricate network of computers interconnected reciprocally, to share an immense volume of data of any nature, through fiberglass cables, coaxial cables or through radio waves (WiFi). The Internet allows various services such as the World Wide Web, email, streaming service, etc.
- Fax. A technology that is now extinct, but serves as an example, and which consisted of using telephone lines to send a reproduction of an image taken from a text, that is, something similar to a photocopier, whose originals, however, were far away. Since the arrival of the Internet it was considered obsolete and abandoned throughout the world.
Impact of telecommunications
Telecommunications today play a vital role in most technological systems, both in the commercial and financial fields, as well as in the military, recreational or cultural fields. Its effects have forever changed the way we relate and communicate among human beings.
They have allowed the emergence of a more homogeneous culture (the “global” culture or 2.0, for example), while they have allowed new forms of commercial exchange and new services. It has quickly become one of the areas of greatest innovation, greatest demand and greatest capital in the contemporary world.
Telecommunications career
The study of telecommunications is carried out from very different approaches, each represented in a university degree or a similar degree, which covers titles as different as, among others:
- Telecommunications engineering
- Web Developer
- Higher technology in computer networks
- University degree in telecommunications
The study of telecommunications has a clear technological profile, oriented towards applied science and electronic, industrial and materials engineering.
References
- “Telecommunication” in Wikipedia.
- “What is telecommunications?” (video) at the Federal Telecommunications Institute (Mexico).
- “History of telecommunications” in Espacio Fundación Telefónica.
- “Telecommunications” in Techopedia.
- “Telecommunication” in The Encyclopaedia Britannica.