From Telecommunication to Traffic Distribution

Abstract

Summary: Telecommunications have undergone profound technological, economic and regulatory changes over the past fifteen years. In particular, the widening range of services provided and the proliferation and interconnection of networks have increasingly dissociated subscribers from traffic on a network. The network is less and less a closed sphere linking subscribers whose traffic it "produces". Networks, and specifically télédistribution, mobile and data transmission networks, carry traffic that is no longer generated by their subscribers alone. The network economy is thus becoming increasingly similar to the distribution economy. The massive introduction of intelligent service - which in many respects resembles intelligent distribution and is increasingly characteristic of service providers' added value - is reflected in a mutation in the way financial markets value telecommunications businesses.