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Abstract : |
The Internet industry is undergoing rapid change as a consequence of telecommunications deregulation, growth in the demand for and supply of IP-based services and products, and the need and desire to provide integrated, voice, video and data services on a single network platform. Currently, the public Internet runs on infrastructure that is owned by a combination of internet service providers (ISPs) and traditional telephone companies. In the United States, there are over 4,000 ISPs, ranging in size from small ?mom and pop ? operations that provide basic Internet access services to large international backbone providers. In the United States, there are currently 32 backbone ISPs (Table 1). These ISPs rely on transport services provided by the more than 1,600 traditional facilities-based local and long distance telephone service providers (Table 2). This industry structure is largely a consequence of legacy regulation and network design. Historically, telephone service providers were subject to rate regulations and line of business restrictions, under the presumption that these were a natural monopoly. Traditional telephone networks were optimized to support a single service, 4KHz voice, |
