Customer Reviews

Digital Telephony (Wiley Series in Telecommunications and Signal Processing)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I teach communications concepts and have found this book to be the single most valuable book in my pursuit of knowledge. Every subject I've needed more information on is covered. Most subjects are explained with a good understanding of communications and concepts assumed by the author...a strong math background would also be helpful. All in all I have yet to find a better all around book that encompasses the communications field as well as Digital Telephony does.

I must admit up front that I'm a long time fan of Dr. Bellamy's book "Digital Telephony" having extensively used the second edition. That edition still sits on my shelf, filled with yellow highlights and stick-on tabs with notes indicating certain areas of the book. I had reviewed that edition with praise, only mentioning that the book needed an update. When the third edition was released, I immediately bought a copy.

There just isn't another book (at least none I've found) that explains how the telephone network "works". The book covers everything, from speech coding, to modulation, to switching, and more. If your work requires that you have an understanding of the network, this is the book for you.

The third edition continues to provide this broad view of the public network, adding or expanding coverage of newer areas such as ATM and optical communications.

I highly recommend this book to all communications engineers and network professionals.

Dr. Bellamy's book covers almost all aspects of how the digital telephone network works, including voice processing, codecs, switching, and traffic analysis. I don't know any other book that focuses on the public telephone network like this one. Personally, I've learned a great deal from this book - my copy is dog-eared with lots of notes and yellow highlights. Whenever I need to know something about the network, this is the first place I turn to. The only shortcoming of the book is its age (published 1991). There is no coverage of voice over IP or voice over ATM, for example. Perhaps Dr. Bellamy will do a third edition soon. Please note that this book is not intended for a lay audience. It assumes a level of knowledge equivalent to an electrical engineering degree. All in all, an excellent text which can be used for learning and for reference.

This book is a top notch treastie on the fundamentals of digital telephony. This books offers an excellent high level overview of the history of the telephony network and the migration to a nearly all digital network including detailed coverage of all aspects and issues of the modern digital systems. As you advance through the chapters of the book it covers each topic is a well balanced amount of detail while providing insight into not only "how", by "why".

The book is very well referenced and researched and can serve as a 'root node' for further investigation on nearly any digital telephony related topic. While the book is not particularly light reading, it is extremely well written and I would highly recommend it to both beginngers and experts alike.

Agree with the previous review. Only problem IS the books is already a little outdated, however, one hardly needs an electrical engineering degree to understand the content. I had no problems understanding it, and all my background comes from a Physics and Comp Sci background. Even so, the author makes a wonderful attempt at explaining most everything. Good book overall to understand, from a historical and technical prespective, the public telco network in the U.S.

I am taking a Master's class in Telecom that is using this book. There is a lot of good information in this book. But it is a tough read. The biggest problem is the author's writing style. I wish he would have taken a tech writing class. If he had, he would have learned that simpler is better. The material is complicated enough. Write the way you speak.

Page 13 for example. "In general tems the equipment assoicated with any particular switching machine can be categorized as providing one of the following functions.. (lists the three functions of a switch)"

What he is trying to say is: "A switch performs 3 basic functions..."

I first saw the draft chapters of this book when John used them to teach telecommunications courses at the SMU engineering school in the 70's. Absolutely the best ever written on the subject matter over the years. A standard reference used by countless people countless times to help shape telecommunications as we know it today.

On a sad note, I'm sorry to inform that John passed away in September 2011. He will be greatly missed by people throughout the industry and his fingerprint will always remain upon it.

An excellent book for introducing anyone (with a technical interest) to digital signal processing. Book is a must, I would say, for understanding what makes 4G work.

Text required for a class... author does good job presenting history of telecom, but takes liberties with many of the examples, deriving answers with concepts not presented or explained in the materials. Plus, working the supplied answers to example problems backwards (because my answers didn't match the author's), I've come across two examples I believe the author made a fundamental error, to-which the teacher says, "yeah, I guess you could do it either way."

Though, even with the liberties, the majority of the text is very readable and comprehendible. It's actually not a bad book to read, even if there wasn't a class-requirement to do so.