ABSTRACT
Most large networks continue to use transmission facilities supplied by the carriers, but in the future the value added to a network and the profits be derived from the control of the network, not in the simple carriage of bits. Having this kind of control over a network presents a major change in the way telecommunications service is provided. All control of the network supplied by customer-owned and equipment-vendor-supplied switches. The ability to control the network, to allocate resources, to develop new services, to change, to do something as simple as reassign a telephone number to someone who has moved his or her office – that kind of control is part of what corporations have been buying in order to build their own private networks. Users want cost control, and buying fixed-price lease lines, switching assets or transmission assets has been a way of isolating them from the uncertainties of tariff policy.
