 countries via telecommunication authorities. Unbundling of copper access networks is present both in Europe and in the United States, but while in Europe it seems that it will remain unchanged for new net- works, in the United States, carriers deploying completely new networks will not be obliged to unbundle them. 2.1.5 Telecommunication Market Value Chain Up to now, we have considered carriers as the players of the telecommunication market since they are in contact with the final customer and manage the telecommunication net- work. Nevertheless, the market relies on an articulated value chain to provide to carriers the complex technology equipment needed to build the network. The value chain of the telecommunication market is depicted in Figure 2.11. Drivers for Telecommunication Network Evolution The first element of the chain is constituted by component suppliers, the companies' buildings, for example, optical fibers, lasers, integrated electronic circuits (IC), optical amplifiers, and all the components that are needed in telecommunication systems. Three types of companies are present in this segment: 1. Components divisions of companies that are vertically integrated and build in- house the key components for their systems (e.g., Infinera and partially also Alcatel- Lucent in the measure in which Bell labs are used for design and production) Companies devoted only to a niche class of components for use in telecommunica- tions (e.g., Santur that was in 2010 the market leader for tunable lasers designed for telecommunication system) 3. Big companies producing components for a plethora of applications (e.g., NEC, which produces a huge number of other product ICs for telecommunications) The situation of this market segment is not easy. In front of the huge CAPEX investments needed to develop the technology, all the price pressure generated at the end customer level goes down along the chain and at the end arrives here. To present an example, tunable lasers for optical fiber transmission had an average cost of a