Telcos and industry watchers say that Microsoft will need to develop and market NT with almost surgical skill before it will be deployed in the majority of service providers' networks. Telcos have been working under an open-systems concept since day one and are unlikely to quickly change. The problem, Dzubeck explained, is that telcos tend to be the most illiberal of Unix bigots. N.C. Microsoft also faces an industry that moves with painful slowness compared with corporate networking, investing in new technologies only when absolutely necessary. Insecurities Providers' unhurried NT migrations may actually be beneficial to corporate network managers concerned about service availability and security.
Telcos are particularly sensitive to security threats.
According to industry experts, security issues will continue to afflict NT at least until the release of NT Server 5.0, which is due early next year and is expected to move away from existing 16-bit encryption implementations. Until then, telcos w ill be just as vulnerable to NT security risks as corporations. For example, a hacker may be able to infiltrate the telco network through a regional ISP's connection to it.