Its WAN is used to support a wide range of applications from E-mail and WEB surfing to legacy transaction applications and ERP software. They have heard about new IP services, based on MPLS and would like to know if their proposal for a new WAN should demand this technology or still be based on Frame Relay. However at present very few operators have MPLS networks in service and those that do have few nodes in service. In addition MPLS is a complex new networking technique and although the majority of network equipment vendors plan to offer it only one is currently shipping products. Gartner therefore recommends that users should not deploy MPLS for mission critical backbones before the second half of 2001 and that even then they should seek reference sites.
Consumers like and buy multimedia.
This means broadband Internet access. Beyond this consumers like mobile communication. Consumer will probably spend a fraction of what they spend today on telephone bills to pay for better multimedia interpersonal communications, including music, games and video. Telecommunication companies will sell primarily the access to networks as the traffic becomes cheaper. They are in a good position to sell the access to the content as well.