In the US, standard gauge track spacing was implemented and enabled common transport across North America. To further facilitate interchange, operating agreements were forged between the railroads covering the sharing of rolling stock and the switching of cars between rail lines, spelling out reciprocal payments and penalties involved in the movement of people and goods along the transportation networks. Hub locations became critical to the flow of commerce, as networks met in these common points and interchanged traffic. Finally, local common carriers came into being for the express purpose of transport of shipments from the rail yard, or switching center, to the end user location. With competing transportation forms including highway, air, and water providing alternatives, the impetus was in place to establish cooperation in the face of competition to guarantee the long-term success of the industry.
Telecoms is at a similar junction point today.
With competing local and long-haul networks covering the earth, there are by some counts more than 10,000 internet and telecoms service providers worldwide. But private line traffic is still in a state which can best be analogised as railroads coming together without the benefit of common planning. This causes tracks not to match up, as well as increasing expenses to complete the final connection. The major contributing factor to this inefficiency is a lack of an industry-standard database. The highly competitive nature of the telecoms industry makes network build-out information a strategic asset for carriers.