olesalers will drive eBusiness in IIC markets in several ways. First, they've already Web enabled most interactions with their retail customers. It is also in their best interest to cooperate with complementary wholesalers to integrate and streamline dependent processes, creating eBusiness and OSS- enabled trading environments. Though not all wholesalers provide end-to-end networks, some handle much of the contact with ILECs, slowly prying open the jaws protecting the "last mile." The wholesaler has assumed much of the technical and financial burden and generally provide the ILEC link for their customers, many of which, could not afford to integrate with ILECs themselves. Retailers. Retailers are a huge group, including garage-based start-ups to massive, multi-national telecommunications conglomerates. They are critical to the supply chain because they create demand and drive innovation. They are the ones out there selling services to customers and experimenting with eBusiness technologies and approaches. They also push wholesalers to improve service delivery, thus driving eBusiness development among their suppliers. Brokers, exchanges and trading portals. Though we can envision a future where a wide variety of IIC services are bought and sold on public, Internet-based exchanges, bandwidth exchanges are most prevalent today. Typically, IICs sell excess or unused network capacity in bulk auctions like exchanges - IIC trading communities if you will. The vehicle to post buyer and seller information for these exchanges is Web portal technology which allows IICs to negotiate online. Bandwidth brokerages work in a similar way, allowing IICs to post bulk bandwidth deals on their Web sites. Outsourcers. As we discussed in Chapter 1, there are a number of IIC business models based on outsourcing. Outsourcers range from ASPs and OSS service bureaus to third party interconnect gateway providers and network database service providers (which include line information database and local number portability, 800 services, and E9