y development. ing times, in many markets by 1995. In addition, because fibre Copper is being rapidly replaced in the trunk network, including systems can easily transport tens of megabits of information, the underseas, and is under threat in the local loop. The pace of fibre network will be positioned to transmit at much higher speeds with deployment is accelerating and wireless communications has pro- marginal cost increases, as service demand arises. vided personal mobility which was unpredictable two decades ago. Coupled with pan-European wireless networks, the economics of fibre access, for both narrowband and wideband, will shift dramati- Telecommunications is an exciting business, so much so that it is cally, obsoleting today's tariff structures. easy to forget the most important consideration in every business; Access will become increasingly liberalised to give customers telecommunication only exists to serve the customer. What the choice. A degree of regulation will remain, if only because of customer desires is services which meet his requirements at prices spectrum issues and because some national authorities believe it which he considers to be good value. will guarantee future revenues. Twenty years ago the services business was a niche industry on Second, in the transport network, fibre systems are being installed the edges of POTS. By 1990 the world market for value-added that operate at speeds of up to 2.4 gigabits per second. This has services was $17 billion, and by the year 2000 it will exceed $80 dramatically lowered costs per bit of information carried. It has also billion. changed network planning rules away from the traditional, point-to- In Europe alone, the services market was $9 billion in 1991 and point systems towards large, self-healing rings. These rings span will exceed $30 billion by the year 2000 - almost 40% of the world many exchanges and are often interconnected, like the Olympic market. In addition a European Commission paper estimates that by symbols, to cover complete cities