Federal funding of long-term research has not increased to cover the decline in industry support. No systematic efforts, such as took place for the semiconductor industry with SEMATECH, have emerged. Because the benefits of much telecommunications research cannot be appropriated by individual firms, therefore, public funding of such research appears necessary.
The NSF and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) have been the two primary sources of federal telecommunications R&D support. NSF, long a supporter of telecommunications R&D spanning a range of topics, has recently been increasing its attention to telecommunications R&D, with an emerging emphasis on new approaches to networking. DARPA, which funded a number of important telecommunications advances in the past (including elements of the Internet itself), has been shifting its emphasis toward more immediate military needs and giving less attention to long-term telecommunications research.
Perhaps the most fundamental change, both in terms of technology and its implications for industry structure, has occurred in the architecture of telecommunications networks. Architecture in this context refers to the functional description of the general structure of the system as a whole and how the different parts of the system relate to each other. Previously the PSTN, cable, and data networks coexisted as separately owned and operated networks carrying different types of communications, although they often shared a common technology base (such as point-to-point digital communications) and some facilities (e.g., high-speed digital pipes shared by different networks).
How are the new networks different? First, they are integrated, meaning that all media— be they voice, audio, video, or data—are increasingly communicated over a single common network. This integration offers economies of scope and scale in both capital expenditures and operational costs, and also allows different media to be mixed within common applications. As a result, both technology suppliers and service providers are increasingly in the business of providing telecommunications in all media simultaneously rather than specializing in a particular type such as voice, video, or data.
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