y service providers emerged. Initial services included weather or stock price information, news, and some entertainment. These were offered to subscribers on a fee- per-service or subscriptions basis. Some of these services originated from within an opera- tor's network, while others were provided by external parties. Thus content provision emerged as a new source of revenue for operators - charging for the service or taking a commission - albeit the amount SO raised was very small compared with the revenue from the 'pipe'. With further advancement of telephone switches towards the end of the 20th century, more sophisticated content and services were offered. Voice boxes, call transfer, intelligent networks, conference calls and SO on are a few of such services provided by operators. Horoscope, counselling, adult calls are examples of services/content provided by third parties over telephone lines. Gradually combinations of these 'non-pipe' services became a significant revenue source for operators, still small compared with the revenue from the 'pipe'. Furthermore, most if not all of these services were provided on the circuit-switched, analogue telephone network. The advent of the World Wide Web and abundance of on-line content and services trans- formed the telecommunications ecosystem landscape at the turn of the 21st century. News, audio, video, games and SO on started to flow over fixed-line internet, raising significant revenues for content providers such as newspapers, iTunes, YouTube and Netflix among many companies. Furthermore, services such as search engines and social networks, as well as peer networking, further provided many service companies with unforeseen income streams. Meanwhile, the telecommunications infrastructure, built and maintained by operators, formed the 'pipe' over which this traffic was flowing. Unfortunately for these operators, very little leverage existed to capture a portion of the content revenue. The reason was that operators did not have any exclusive 'gateway' capability to 