ication services were managed by a single carrier, either directly owned by the administration itself or operating under an exclusive contract with the administration [1]. The situation was quite different in the United States, where after the split of old AT&T in 1984, the long-haul network was managed by a group of competing carriers (the new AT&T, MCI, ...) while monopoly remained in the local networks. In particular, any local area was served by different regional bell operating companies (RBOCs), all coming from the original local structure of the old AT&T [2]. The U.S. situation was richer in terms of players, and competition was created in the long-distance segment of the network. However, these competing long-haul carriers were not in control of the services provided to the final users, but simply delivered transport capability to the local carriers. Services managing carriers, RBOCs, were on the contrary, in a practical monopoly situation due to the geographical separation of their areas of business. Both in the Far East and in eastern Europe, the development of telecommunication ser- vices was a step behind the United States and western Europe and, at least in communist countries, was often more influenced by political reasons than by a real need coming from the users. Also, under the product offering point of view, the telecommunication market was quite a particular one. The customer base of telecommunication carriers was divided into two big categories- business and consumer customers-where revenues coming from consumers were much higher in the typical case than revenues coming from business customers. The product offered to the consumer market was essentially built around telephone service. Adding a new feature to the plain telephone (e.g., added value services, a network- located memory to trace lost calls and SO on) implied a complex engineering development since it had to be implemented in the software of the telephone digital switches, very com- plex machines constituting the core of the network.