. Rings not only dramatically year 2000 over 60% of all EC employment will depend on telecoms increase the reliability of any service, but they also make it much based activity. However, a RACE study found that Europe's tele- easier to provision bandwidth services quickly, as any information communication operators currently gain only 5% of their revenues entering a ring is immediately available to all other points in the from specialised business services, compared with 20% in Japan ring. and the US. The combination of low cost transport and easy access will enable The aim of technology is to provide the customer with services. a telecommunication operator to concentrate its switching at a For example higher bandwidth, enabled by the use of synchronous smaller number of sites, leading to larger, more cost-effective swit- transmission over optical fibre, will support a host of new applica- ches. It will also make it easier to offer new services because a single tions, such as image and high speed data. Similarly intelligent service node, attached at one point on a ring, can provide service to networks will grow, the intelligence and functionality being moved anyone connected at any other point on the ring. This lowers the closer and closer to the customer. entry hurdles for new services by enabling ubiquitous access at a The trend in economics of networks will have a significant impact small incremental cost. on customers as well as providers. So long as tariffs remain high, Some degree of control over the transport backbone will also private networks will continue to grow. If, however, tariffs fall persist, to avoid duplication of resources, to protect its integrity and closer to costs, we will see increased demand for public network to co-ordinate and set standards that allow us to move things across services. Here the experience of the US market is illustrative: of the the total infrastructure. 500+ US corporations that built private networks in the 1980s, But in the third area of services, the intelligent net