Keep me logged in until I sign out. In essence, basic services simply open a transmission path for the customer between two or more points. If a carrier makes its facilities available to transport enhanced services, it is regulated as a carrier, not an enhanced services provider. Internet service providers, therefore, are considered enhanced. Telephone companies that furnish the link between a customer's computer and an ISP's facilities, on the other hand, are common carriers.
Some services are hybrid in nature, combining basic transport with enhanced features.
For example, when a value added network operator enhances transport facilities it obtains from a carrier by adding protocol conversion and other features in order to provide packet switched services, the FCC will consider the entire service to be enhanced. If a facilities-based carrier provides such services, on the other hand, the FCC will deem only the enhancements themselves to be enhanced services, and will regulate the basic transport separately as either, as the case may be, private carriage or common carriage. Similarly, the states regulate intrastate enhanced services either lightly or not at all. Thus, to the extent that an entity provides only enhanced services, it will face little or no regulation within the United States.