Telegraph, telephone, wireless and mobile: the story of how the various communication networks were constructed over the last two hundred years or so.
Telecommunications is a relatively clean and discreet industry that creates very few emissions or pollution and uses few non-renewable resources. But it's not to say it has no environmental impact - it has.
Running cables and wires from place to place, or sending signals...
The easiest and cheapest way to construct a wired telecommunication network is to string the wires up over the ground, suspending them from poles.
It looks basic but that's not to say that there's no expertise and technology involved.
It's a lot more complicated...
A telecommunications operator can reduce the visual intrusion of its network by laying all cables underground. Nothing could be simpler...
Generally, only up to a point. It's expensive to bury cables underground - and very difficult to reach them for repair, maintenance...
The difficulties of laying a cable network on land pale into insignificance compared with those involved in laying cable under the sea.
The main problems are in surveying the route beforehand - finding a nice flat stretch of seabed - and also in paying out miles of cable...
You might think that televisions signals are transmitted exclusively over the airwaves - but that's not so. In fact, transmission from a tower is only the last link in the chain - and even that is changing as television becomes digital and distributed in different ways.
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