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## 2. Background

## 2.1 The past

More than 30 years ago Internet didn't exist. Interactive communications were only made by telephone at PSTN line cost.

Data exchange was expansive (for a long distance) and no one had been thinking to video interactions (there was only television that is not interactive, as known).

## 2.2 Yesterday

Few years ago we saw appearing some interesting things: PCs to large masses, new technologies to communicate like cellular phones and finally the great net: Internet; people begun to communicate with new services like email, chat, etc. and business reborned with the web allowing people buy with a "click".

## 2.3 Today

Today we can see a real revolution in communication world: everybody begins to use PCs and Internet for job and free time to communicate each other, to exchange data (like images, sounds, documents) and, sometimes, to talk each other using applications like Netmeeting or Internet Phone. Particularly starts to diffusing a common idea that could be the future and that can allow real-time vocal communication: VoIP.

## 2.4 The future

We cannot know what is the future, but we can try to image it with many computers, Internet almost everywhere at high speed and people talking (audio and video) in a real time fashion. We only need to know what will be the means to do this: UMTS, VoIP (with video extension) or other? Anyway we can notice that Internet has grown very much in the last years, it is free (at least as international means) and could be the right communication media for future.

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