 crashed with a telecommunication system regulated by market rules and with the fact that developing Internet involves huge costs both for equip- ment and infrastructure. As we have seen, the great effort that was made during the so-called bubble period by telecommunication carriers to upgrade the network in pace with Internet penetration left the carriers in a difficult financial position. Starting from that period, there was a continuous push from users to develop broadband access, to deliver a wider access bandwidth, and to decrease the cost of connection. This push was operated in a market where there were too many players, and also the bigger carrier was hungry to increase its share to face its big debt. Thus, a sort of commercial war started, that has lasted up to present times, where in front of a con- tinuous increase of broadband penetration and offered bandwidth, the bandwidth price decreased at a fast pace. The increase of the access bandwidth is SO uniform and continuous that Jacob Nielsen in a paper published in 1998 [27] introduced the Nielsen law of Internet bandwidth that essentially states that access bandwidth increases about 50% a year. This is similar in its formulation to the Moore law of computer power, and it is surprising how much it fits the reality up to now. An example of the Nielsen law is given in Figure 2.7, where the peak bandwidth offered by different carriers to a residential customer in California is plotted versus time [27]. 1.00E + 08 Access bandwidth (bit/s) High-speed cable modem 1.00E + 07 1.00E + 06 1.00E + 05 1.00E + 04 1.00E + 03 1.00E + 02 Acoustic 300 bit/s modem 1.00E + 01 1.00E + 00 FIGURE 2.7 Plot of peak bandwidth offered to the residential users for Internet surfing in California versus time. (After Nielsen, J., Nielsen's Law of Internet Bandwidth [Online], Alertbox, 1998, last update 2010, http://www.useit. com/alertbox/980405.html (accessed: March 5, 2010), ISSN 1548-5552.) Drivers for Telecommunication Network Evolution $/Mbit/s Cable FIGURE 2.8 The U.S. average