One of my recent blog posts reviewed a new book, Digital Equity Ecosystems, by Colin Rhinesmith. A reader asked me about some of my other favorite telecom books. I have a personal interest in the history of telecom, so many of these books discuss major events in telecom history. I’m sure I’m missing some great books, but here is the list that first came to mind. Feed free to add others in the comments.
The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and The Great Age of American Innovation by Jon Gertner. I’ve always been fascinated by Bell Labs and was lucky enough to visit it in its heyday. The scientists and engineers at the lab generated more than one new patent per day for new technologies.
Fundamentals of Wireless Communication by David Tse & Pramod Viswanath. This is the only textbook on the list. This describes the fundamentals of wireless communications and a huge range of wireless technologies.
Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age by Susan P. Crawford. This is an interesting look that examines how the U.S. was poised to be the world leader in broadband, but how much of the rest of the world was able to build networks that delivered faster speeds with lower prices. This is the story about an industry hijacked by a small handful of monopolies.
Beyond Sputnik and the Space Race: The Origins of Global Satellite Communications by Hugh P. Slotten. As a kid, I was fascinated by satellites and remember tracking the path of the first communications satellites, Telstar 1 and Telstar 2, across the sky at night. This is a good history of the development of satellite communications networks.
Exploding the Phone: The Untold Story of Teenagers and Outlaws who Hacked Ma Bell by Phil Lapsley with a foreword by Steve Wozniak. This book describes the history of long-distance calling and how hackers learned to exploit the weaknesses in the AT&T network to steal billions of dollars of long-distance calls.
Optical Illusions: Lucent and the Crash of Telecom by Lisa Endlich. This is a story about the 2000 telecom crash by concentrating on Lucent, the manufacturer spun off from AT&T. In a short period of time, Lucent went from the sixth largest company on the stock exchange to being in complete shambles. Great read to learn about that momentous period.
The Unauthorized Bio of the Baby Bells & Info-Scandal by Bruce A. Kushnick. This is one of a series of books by the author that looks at how the Baby Bell companies like Bell Atlantic and BellSouth were able to gain huge concessions from regulators in return for promises to build future-looking broadband networks, and how most of those promises were broken.
Farm Fresh Broadband: The Politics of Rural Connectivity by Christopher Ali. This book discusses the federal broadband policies that led to the stark digital divide between urban and rural broadband. I wrote a review of this book when it first came out in 2021, and it’s still an interesting read today.
Tough Calls: AT&T And The Hard Lessons Learned From The Telecom Wars by Dick Martin. This is an interesting book written by an ex-head of public relations at AT&T that tells the story of the struggles the company faced after the Telecommunications Act of 1996 opened the telecom market to competition.