Mike, I happen to know the innards of telecom equipment (GSM, TDMA and CDMA handsets) and they are NOT real time, they are "fast enough response". If you are multiprocessing and each task runs, say, every 10mS and the event it must handle happens every 50mS it is definitely fast enough, but it is not real time. Real time is when action is taken when an event happens, not just acted upon some time before it happens again. In many cases that is more than good enough, but it does not make it real time. This should answer re "define real time"
Erik Malund