'Without a doubt, this is the best book ever written on telecom management. If you're in it, you must have this book' - Harry Newton, Teleconnect Library. This book is an ideal companion to "The Irwin Handbook of Telecommunications". It is the only book to provide managers in any business with updated information and solutions for today's telecommunications systems. "The Irwin Handbook of Telecommunications Management" is renowned for covering every important telecommunications system management issue. Now comprehensively revised and updated for an increasingly complex telecommunications field, this classic resource provides hands-on techniques for understanding today's major technological changes - and incorporating them into your organization's overall telecom strategy.The topics new to this edition include: techniques to integrate automatic call distribution equipment with the Internet; the emergence of competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs); the difference between incumbent and competitive LECs; internet service providers (ISPs) and how to evaluate and select them; new technologies that allows employees to work from home; server and e-mail management; frame relay and intranet or virtual private network selection and management; inter networking equipment and services; firewall and router selection and management; and, management of data network bandwidth. "The Irwin Handbook of Telecommunications Management" contains many practical tools that you can use on the job. To make them more useful, computer versions are available to purchasers of this book through a special, dedicated Website. Download cost models in spreadsheet form and use them by inserting your own values. For call center load and trunking calculations, a program is included that can be run on any Windows computer. In this era of rapid technological change - from the Internet's ability to add value at every level of business to the critical decisions that must be made on whether or not to converge voice and data at the network level - only one book provides invaluable reference material and information for every aspect of telecommunications.That book is "The Irwin Handbook of Telecommunications Management, Third Edition". A vital resource for anyone involved in the telecommunications business, it covers the entire spectrum of 21st century telecommunications. Organized into five sections, "The Irwin Handbook of Telecommunications Management" makes every important aspect of managing a telecommunications system easy to locate, understand, and implement. Part I is a comprehensive overview of telecommunications management, addressing issues including the Telecommunications Act of 1996, current and long-range planning, feasibility analysis, and forecasting. Part II discusses the selection and management of telecom equipment and services. The chapters examine management of Internet services, writing and evaluating responses to RFPs, managing long distance services, and more.Part III covers the management of a telecom facility - including PBX and key telephone equipment, automatic call distributors, voice processing equipment, local area networks and Internets, wide area networks, convergence, and video and audio conferencing equipment. Part IV is about cost control. Besides offering specific techniques for effective cost containment, the chapters in this section cover benchmarking, contracting, outsourcing, and optimizing voice circuits and data network bandwidth. Part V puts it all together.From the development of a telecom operations and disaster prevention plan to project management, quality control, security and fraud prevention, and more, it provides a thorough examination of telecommunications operations planning and execution. Comprehensive in scope and concise in detailing the information that busy professionals need to know, "The Irwin Handbook of Telecommunications Management" provides complete, detailed coverage of the processes and procedures for getting maximum value from a telecommunications system. Managers in any industry can turn to it for authoritative solutions - and as a necessary how-to manual - for every telecommunications management question.