- Downloaded from Digital Engineering Library @ McGraw-Hill (www.digitalengineeringlibrary.com) Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved. Any use is subject to the Terms of Use as given at the website. Telecom Market Segments Telecom Market Segments standing of what makes the customer tick. There is one additional char- acteristic that must be addressed: While the service provider or system manufacturer may be in a position to define the characteristics of the lower seven layers, only the customer can define value. A vendor who understands this sublime fact will have a significant advantage over those who do not. In the days when bandwidth held sway and was a tremendous money generator, the lower layers represented a cash cow ripe for milking. Today, however, with the perceived glut of bandwidth that is available, the price of bandwidth has plummeted to near zero-a frightening real- ity for those companies that have traditionally made their fortunes through the sale of bits-per-second. Today, the big money lies at the top of the stack, closer to the customer, a place where unique, specially designed network products can be positioned on a customer-by-customer basis. The traditional service providers-the LECs, cable companies, and IXCs-are scrambling to establish a toehold that will allow them to climb the stack, to move out of the primordial network ooze into the lofty heights of content and services. Of course, the ILECs and cable MSOs are in an enviable position: They touch the customers with their networks, and whoever is closest to the customers has the greatest influence over them and the infrastructure deployment decisions they are likely to make. The combination of network provisioning and content is unbeat- able, and is fast becoming a major focus for converged providers. The ability to provision an end-to-end network as well as deliver application content is a powerful combination. Thus, the service providers' interest in moving up the food chain is a valid one. So what does all th