IGCSE ICT: Applications — Communication — Practice Questions

These are original questions written for Marlbridge, in the style and at the standard of the examination. They are not reproduced past-paper questions — Cambridge International holds copyright in its own papers. Use these alongside the official past papers available through your school or Cambridge directly.

Related: ICT Applications: Communication revision notes

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Section A

1. State one advantage of a poster over a website as a communication medium. [1]

2. State the key difference between media streaming and an ePublication, in terms of what happens to the data. [2]

3. State what VoIP stands for. [1]

4. Give one disadvantage of a website compared with a printed newsletter as a way of reaching an audience with no internet access. [1]

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Section B

5. A charity wants to publish its annual report so that supporters can read it in full even in areas with unreliable internet access.

(a) Recommend a suitable communication medium. [1] (b) Justify your recommendation, referring to what happens to the data. [3]

6. A business currently makes all its international calls over the standard mobile network and wants to reduce costs by switching to VoIP.

(a) Explain why VoIP calls can be cheaper than standard mobile calls, especially internationally. [2] (b) Explain one risk the business accepts by making this switch. [2]

7. A local council is deciding between a printed newsletter and a website to inform residents about roadworks that change week to week.

(a) Recommend the more suitable medium. [1] (b) Justify your recommendation. [3]

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Section C

8. A university wants to deliver an engaging welcome talk to new students at an in-person open day, and separately wants those same students to be able to review detailed course information independently at any time afterward.

Recommend a suitable communication medium for each of the two needs, and explain why a single medium would not serve both needs equally well. [6]

9. Explain why a video call can be considered an extension of VoIP technology, rather than a completely separate form of communication. [3]

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Worked answers

1. A poster can be viewed without needing a device or an internet connection. [1]

2. Media streaming plays the content as data arrives, without downloading the whole file first; an ePublication is downloaded as a complete file before (or as) it is used, after which no ongoing connection is needed. [2]

3. Voice over Internet Protocol. [1]

4. A website cannot be reached at all by someone without a suitable internet-connected device, whereas a printed newsletter can be read by anyone who receives a physical copy, regardless of internet access. [1]

5. (a) An ePublication (e.g. a downloadable PDF report). [1] (b) An ePublication is downloaded as a complete file, so once it has been downloaded it can be read entirely offline; this suits supporters in areas with unreliable internet access, unlike a webpage or streamed content, which would need an ongoing connection to view. [3]

6. (a) VoIP carries voice as data over the business’s existing internet connection rather than over a dedicated voice channel charged per minute by a mobile network operator, so international calls avoid the higher per-minute charges that standard mobile networks apply for international routing. [2] (b) Call quality now depends on the reliability and available bandwidth of the internet connection at the time of the call; if the connection is poor or congested, the business risks delayed, dropped or lower-quality audio in a way a standard mobile voice call, which does not share bandwidth with other internet traffic, would not experience. [2]

7. (a) A website. [1] (b) Roadworks information that changes week to week needs to be corrected and updated regularly, which a website supports (it can be updated at any time) but a printed newsletter cannot (it is fixed once distributed and would need a completely new print run for every change), making a website far more practical and cost-effective for frequently changing information. [3]

8. For the in-person welcome talk, a multimedia presentation is the more suitable choice, since it can combine text, images, audio and video to deliver an engaging, richer experience at a live event. For independent review of detailed course information afterward, a website is more suitable, since it can be updated at any time, holds far more content than a single presentation, and remains available for students to access whenever they choose rather than only at the original event. A single medium would not serve both needs equally well because a multimedia presentation is not practical for students to revisit independently afterward in the same way a website is, while a website alone would be a weaker choice for delivering an engaging, in-person experience at a welcome event, since it relies on the audience actively navigating it rather than experiencing a delivered presentation. [6] (Marks for correctly matching each need to a distinct, justified medium, and for explaining why one medium could not equally serve both purposes.)

9. A video call, like a standard VoIP voice call, carries its communication as data over the internet rather than over a dedicated telecommunications voice channel; it simply adds a live video feed alongside the audio data, using the same fundamental internet-based, data-carried approach rather than a fundamentally different underlying technology. This is why a video call shares VoIP’s core characteristics, such as needing a sufficiently fast internet connection and depending on connection quality, rather than being a wholly separate category of communication. [3]

Official syllabus

Cambridge International, Cambridge IGCSE Information and Communication Technology (0417) syllabus for 2026, 2027 and 2028, Subject content, section 6.1 “Communication” — the same specification cited by the ICT Applications: Communication study guide and its revision notes. Verified 2026-09-02.