The word telecommunications consist of two parts, tele and communications, tele has the meaning of information over distance, like television that transmit video signals over distance, telephone that transmit audio signals over distance, communications here mean exchange over information. So telecommunication means information exchange over a distance, not face to face.

Because information generally can be classified to be audio, video and data, traditional telecommunication equipment was developed to meet such requirement. Telephone for audio, TV for video and computer for data. Nowadays it is complex for this equipment; there is videophone, cable TV and multi media on computer. Fiber optics contributes to the modern telecommunications and brings it much more bandwidth and faster speed.