In the world of telecoms, the term information conveys several levels of meaning. It may concern individual bits, bit sequences, blocks, frames, or packets. It may represent a message payload, or its overhead; the necessary extra information for the network nodes to transmit the message payload practically and safely from one end to another. In many successive stages, this information is encapsulated altogether to form larger blocks corresponding to higher-level network protocols, and the reverse all the way down to destination. From any telecom-scientist viewpoint, information represents this uninterrupted flow of bits, with network intelligence to process it. Once converted into characters or pixels, the remaining message bits become meaningful or valuable in terms of acquisition, learning, decision, motion, or entertainment. In such a larger network perspective, where information is well under control and delivered with the quality of service, what could be today's need for any information theory (IT)?

In the telecom research community indeed, there seems to be little interest for information theory, as based on the valid perception that there is nothing new to worry about. While the occasional evocation of Shannon invariably raises passionate group discussions, the professional focus is about the exploitation of bandwidth and network deployment issues.