Are Telecommunications questions on-topic here?

Question

A couple months ago I suggested the merge of two Area51 proposals: Network Engineering and Telecommunications.

Turns out that the network were much faster, congratulations!

So, are telecommunications questions on-topic here?

Answer 1

Some things I am considering as I provide my answer:

• The line between telecommunications and network is sufficiently "blurry" these days and I don't see it getting any less so over time.
• It seems the telecommunications folks want a "home" on SE as well, but I don't know that they have enough mass by themselves.
• Telecommunications relates more with us than any of the other SE sites...and over time this is only more likely to be true.
• There seems to be some concern over the "mass" of this project in other meta questions and an increase in scope along with additional users might help us get out of beta.

I say go ahead and merge it in. Please see edit below

As an aside to the naming question, I think we could come up with several "witty" names that would include telecommunications as well.

Edit: Just went back an re-read the proposal, and it is broader than what I remember looking at before (perhaps a different proposal?). I still think the SP, telephony and VoIP stuff could fit well enough, but there are other topics (like FM radio) that may not fit really well.

Answer 2

The datacom aspect of telecoms certainly is, so that's things like:

• PDH/SDH circuits (T1, E1 through OC768, STM256)
• DWDM and other forms of transport (SONET muxes, etc)
• Hand-off & monitoring

What that leaves is the mushy aspect of non-data telecoms, ie. voice. I'd say much of VoIP is in scope, if not here then on SF.

Other than mobile voice telecoms (GSM, CDMA, etc.) I'm not sure if there's anything that I'd really call out of scope.