o arrive at an optimal solution. While it is not known whether the Persians ever undertook such a formal analysis, experience from other courier systems should have given them a guideline for 'good' - if not the 'best' - practice. As the cost of operation was borne by the Empire, it is difficult to determine how much each individual message transfer cost. Private usage of the courier system, perhaps for trade purposes, is not recorded. The cost of sending such a private message could have given insight into the overall cost of the operation. Broadband Telecommunications Technologies and Management The Royal Highway and the Royal Mail clearly had a great strategic and security importance for the Persian Empire. Business considerations would have included the high cost of constructing, securing and operating the stations, and of maintaining the roads but this must have been justified by the strategic benefits that the system provided. The Empire's policy in funding, building and maintaining the road was also important in the continued operation of the system. Communication has always been a basic human need. We primarily used it for security: to protect ourselves and our kin. As we evolved, we have used it to learn about others and convey information about ourselves such as what we do and will, how we wish to do business, what our interests are, and SO on. Development of speech (our primary communication method), and as we evolved, writing at the dawn of civilization, were major advances which have laid the foundation of an ever advancing civilization in which we live today. Such information may be communicated in person, or through means and devices that carry information to remote locations. We define this transfer of information across time and place as telecommunications, and consider that it has been with us from the very beginning of civilisation, as illustrated in the Royal Mail example. 'Telecommunications' is a recent term (first used in a book in 1904 [5]) and generally means the science and technology of