One of the dominant trends affecting communications today is technological convergence. The functionalities of the Internet and the public switched telephone network ("PSTN") are merging, with Internet service providers ("ISPs"), on the one hand, increasingly offering telecommunications applications, and telecommunication carriers, on the other hand, steadily migrating their networks to digital transmission and packet-switching architectures (ADSL, ATM, etc.).
This trend to technological convergence creates business instability, as the roles of the various players are changing rapidly. Illustrations include the movement of interexchange carriers ("IXCs") and regional Bell local exchange carriers ("LECs") into the IP business, the launch of TCI's "@Home" cable modem service, the acquisition by MFS Communications, a leading competitive access provider, of UUNet Technologies, a major ISP, and the purchase of Stratacom (a leading ATM switch manufacturer) by Cisco Systems (the dominant provider of Internet routers).
Business instability in turn leads to regulatory conflict, as the clash of technology models is exacerbated by new, and different, competitors with markedly different corporate cultures and regulatory backgrounds. In telecommunications law and policy, these regulatory conflicts are occurring on four principal fronts:
