Telecommunications networks have always fascinated me. My interest was sparked when, as an engineering student in the late sixties, I was told that the telephone network was the biggest machine on earth yet it was constructed from a few basic building blocks replicated many, many times over. It seemed to me that a machine with those characteristics was both already a remarkable engineering feat and a perfect platform for the rapid development of more sophisticated services. So I decided upon a career in telecommunications engineering.

I soon discovered that there was nothing basic about either the building blocks or the architecture of those networks. They were already engineeringly sophisticated at every layer and in every enabling technology. That sophistication was to lead to the continuing development of telecoms networks at a far greater pace than any of us working in the field three or four decades ago could possibly have imagined.

From voice to data; analogue to digital; terrestrial to satellite; tethered to untethered, the progress has been remarkable. Yet undoubtedly the most remarkable development of all has been in wireless networks. Nearly half of the world's population take it for granted that the purpose of telecoms networks is to connect people, not places. An increasing proportion of them use those connections for exchanging text and images as readily as voice. The transformational effect on national economies, education, health and many other factors that bear upon the quality of life is apparent.