Traditionally, telecommunications denoted the long-distance connections that linked television networks to their affiliates and the long-distance phone connections that linked telephone networks to local switching centers. Hence the term applied both to AT&T's long-distance telephone network and to the television industry's worldwide networks-but each used very different technologies to transmit voice or video. Now with the rapidly growing size of the Internet, telecommunications has expanded to include data networks. The newest technologies to join the telecommunications industry are wireless phones and wireless data businesses.

Telecommunications and information-related industries continue to enjoy a rapid growth in the Internet and the wireless phone sectors. Table 1 provides a summary of the major classes of telecommunications services and how they function.