Open Layered Networks: the Growing Importance of Market Coordination

Abstract

Based upon the Internet perspective, this paper will attempt to clarify and revise several ideas about the separation between infrastructure facilities and service offerings in digital communications networks. The key notions that we will focus on in this paper are: i) the bearer service as a technology-independent interface which exports blind network functionality to applications development; ii) the organizational consequences associated with the emergence of a sustainable market of bearer service: a clear movement at the level of industrial structure from traditional hierarchies to more market coordination.