Acknowledgements
Having coauthored three previous technical books on telecom related topics, The Mobile Radio Servicing Handbook in 1989, Data Over Radio in 1992 and 3G Handset and Network Design in 20031 it occurred to me that it might be useful to write a fourth book documenting the changes that have occurred in the past eight years and the related implications for the industry looking forward.
It then occurred to me that this was a massive amount of work for a minimal return and the idea was shelved until this week end when I read an interview2 in the Guardian Week End Review section on Michael Moorcock, a prolific author of Science Fiction. On a good day Mr Moorcock can apparently produce 15 000 words of breathless prose and once authored a complete book in three days.
On the basis that as each year passes telecoms seems to more closely resemble science fiction I decided I should not be a wimp and get down to writing.
A few phone calls to some of my previous coauthors established that they were less than enthusiastic at joining me again in a technical publishing venture and asked why didn’t I do this one on my own.
So at this point I would like to acknowledge with thanks my previous coauthors Mr Mike Fitch, now with British Telecom Research at Martlesham Heath, Mr David Ogley, now working in the psychiatric profession, an industry increasingly closely aligned with our own and my ex-codirector and business partner Roger Belcher with whom miraculously I am still on talking terms after nearly thirty years of close technical and commercial cooperation.
Roger’s crucial role at RTT and on all previous book projects has been to spot and correct gross errors of a technical nature.
His absence as an arbiter of this particular work is therefore alarming but I am assuming that after thirty years of working on engineering projects in the industry I should be able to correct most mistakes on my own, an assumption that I hope does not prove to be misguided.
And rather than attempt this particular literary Everest completely solo and without the aid of extra oxygen I have called on the services of my other friend John Tysoe of the Mobile World to provide relevant financial analysis and market and business statistics that I hope will help integrate the technology and engineering story that we have to tell with the market and business dynamics of our industry today. Thanks are also due to my close friend and business colleague Jane Zweig who has been patiently helpful at explaining why the US continues to be bafflingly different from the rest of the world. Thanks also to Tony Hay for unearthing useful articles on battery technology from the British Library.
John Liffen and Tilly Blyth in the telecommunications and computing curatorial department at the Science Museum have also been a great source of inspiration. In particular they have demonstrated that the Museum has case study resources that document with great detail the reasons why some innovations succeed and some fail. These resources have direct relevance to the formulation of present day industrial strategy in the telecommunications industry.
I would also like to thank the GSM Association for permission to reproduce some of the study work undertaken for them in 1997, Peregrine Semiconductor, Ethertronics, Antenova, Avago and Quintel for their permission to use specific product data references and the team at Nokia Siemens Networks who under Harri Holma’s guidance produce such excellent technical books on LTE that this particular work does not aspire to emulate.
Other thanks are due to my long-suffering family, Liz, Tom and Hannah, though they are onerously familiar with my tendency to engage in projects that are interesting but seem to make little apparent financial sense. I have also found myself drawing on my father’s work and experience gained over a fifty-year career in telecommunications engineering. Some of his knowledge can be found in the Newnes Telecommunications Pocket Book that he coauthored with his business colleague Ted Edis, published posthumously in 1992.
And finally my thanks to Mark Hammond, Susan Barclay, Sandra Grayson and the production team at John Wiley who I am anticipating will be their usual helpful selves in guiding me towards the production of a final manuscript that passes market muster.
I did suggest that approaching the writing of this work as a homage to Mr Moorcock might result in a work that sold in the tens of thousands thereby making us all exceedingly rich.
Mark pointed out that on the basis of my previous publishing history this outcome, though much to be wished for, was unfortunately exceedingly unlikely.
Still, it’s always good to start these projects with a healthy dose of enthusiasm, though I have just noticed that it has taken me 45 minutes to write the 1000 words of this initial opening piece, which suggests that 15 000 words a day might be overoptimistic. But onwards and upwards, a job begun is a job half done – with 149 000 words to go how can that possibly be true?
Good heavens it’s tea time already.
Geoff Varrall
4.00 Monday 4 February 2011
1 Copies of these books can be bought either from Amazon or American Book Exchange http://www. abebooks.co.uk/.
2 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/feb/04/michael-moorcock-hari-kunzru Hari Kunzru Interview with Michael Moorcock, Guardian 4 February 2011.