Projects the potential for photonic switching and control in networks by reviewing historic trends in technology and system development, analyzing application needs as a source of requirements on the technologies, and characterizing the limitations of competing electronic and photonic technologies for performing these functions. The author concludes that 'all optical' switching systems concepts are in their infancy and are one to two decades away from any real usage. Such optical structures will by then most likely involve radically different concepts from electronic switches, as opposed to being photonic analogs of switching elements. Deployment of more limited application photonic subsystems in hybrid electrooptical structures are, however, distinct possibilities in earlier time frames.>

Federal Communication Commission Docket 18 262 allocated a 75-MHz band to the common carriers to implement high capacity mobile telephone systems. The Bell System has proposed a cellular arrangement of low-power transmitters/receivers that permits frequency reuse in a coverage area. This method of achieving spectrum efficiency will require extensive centralized coordination and control to properly administer channel assignments and to interconnect the mobiles with each other and with the direct distance dialing (DDD) network. This can be accomplished by means of an electronic switching system (ESS) with special data terminals and trunking arrangements, and a unique program. In the proposed plan the radio sites (base stations) act effectively as remote concentrators in the frequency domain under the control of ESS, which in turn acts primarily as a trunk-to-trunk switcher. In addition to the usual switching, signaling, and supervising functions, the switching office must also perform numerous special functions including paging of mobiles, location of mobiles (signal strength and ranging data analysis), channel reassignment of mobiles, and reswitching of mobiles to various base stations-these last three occurring while customers are talking.