By Margie Semilof
"Telephone companies are slowly losing control of the networks they designed and controlled for more than 100 years," said David Isenberg, an engineer within AT&T Labs' own research department. . . . Isenberg argued the Internet will break the phone company model by passing control to the end user . . . Because the Internet crosses a variety of networks, he said, it hides the details of how networks operate . . . "One impact is that you get paradigm-breaking companies like Netscape, that you cannot predict," he added. "You don't know what customers want before it is there." . . . "If you have a network that is underspecified and in control of users, where you can test what users want, then it's likely that those will be the places that powerful paradigm changes appear first." (For the full text see article by Margie Semilof on Page 143 and 144.)
Date last modified: Dec 24 1997