ch utilities, attracted by the potential ultrabroadband market, either entered the access market directly or rented to competitive local carrier their infrastructure. Thus, while in the United States local carriers are disappearing by merging with long- haul companies, in Europe the inverse process is ongoing, with a set of competitive carri- ers emerging in the access area. A paradigmatic case is that of Fastweb in Italy, the first carrier in Europe that was born in 1999, deploying a fiber-based access network, that today is present in several areas of north and central Italy [16]. To face this competition, European incumbents are also moving toward fiber-based access, even if no clear decision has been taken, with carriers involved in field tests and preliminary planning. In this situation, it is clear that the telecommunication market today is menaced by stag- nation and by financial weakness of the main carriers. Nevertheless, the push toward new technologies, in particular in the access, is strong both to gain advantage in a complex competitive scenario and to decrease the network operation cost. 2.1.1 Customer Base Impact on the Economics of Carriers The first step to analyze today's telecommunication market is to look at the final customer. A tier one carrier has a customer base divided into three categories: 1. Private customers (the so-called retail market) 2. Business customers 3. Wholesale customers (i.e., other carriers renting network resources, including CLEXs using unbundling) Drivers for Telecommunication Network Evolution 15.000 Other activities 3.771 Wholesale 1.720 Business Telecom Italia revenues 1.630 year 2008 (M€) Retail (Internet) Retail (plain old phone) 7.529 FIGURE 2.5 Revenue of Telecom Italia in 2008. (From the public balance sheet.) Private customers and business customers buy a service bundle from the carrier, which can vary from customer to customer and from carrier to carrier. Considering an incumbent carrier, the revenues are mainly from the retail market and are still more from 