Commercial, legal, and international aspects of packet communications

Packet switching technology emerged rapidly in the 1970's as another viable mode of communications switching, along with circuit and message switching. Since packet switching offers economical and versatile data communication capabilities in a multiuser environment, it is particularly well suited for furnishing public data communication network services. Public packet networks are now established or being developed in most industrialized countries, and the introduction of these networks has raised policy issues relating to the structure and regulation of the national networks, and the interconnection of national networks into an international packet switching system. This paper reviews these issues and concludes that public packet switching network services will continue to be regulated in all cases; that competitive packet networks will coexist in the U.S. and in Canada, but that only one national packet network will exist in each of most other countries; that packet networks will aggravate the problem of distinguishing nonregulated data processing services from regulated data communication services; that international interconnection of public packet networks based upon CCITT standanh will occur rapidly over the next several years; and that a unified international packet switching system will eventually emerge similar to today's international telephone and telex systems.