End users 1.7 Any person who is not in the business of selling telecommunication services or services with a telecommunication service component to the public at large. Therefore, it includes closed user groups and entities reselling telecommunication services only to organisations under the same substantive ownership as well as final customers for retail telecommunication services. For the purposes of this consultation paper, the telecommunications market has been subdivided into three categories of service. The distinction between the three categories is important as the changes proposed in this document are built on this categorisation. Only network operators can realistically provide network services economically.
Network services are the use of the network to convey calls, messages and signals over it.
The product purchased is the connection of the caller, the subsequent conveyance over the network and in some cases, additional services such as call waiting or caller display. The precise form of the services reflects the needs of operators connecting their own network with another. Most of the time, these operators will be conveying a call over part of their network, and passing it over to the interconnected network which will convey it over a part of its network to the appropriate destination. These are retail services which, in a fixed network, have generally been provided by network operators and are based on network services. Voice telephony is the major basic retail service.