Explore by Market Sectors

The Data Communications market sector consists of...

firms that innovate products to interconnect computers and peripherals using the telephone networks. Up through 1968, AT&T, then a regulated monopoly, suppressed competition by preventing the attachment of foreign devices to its telephone network. But in that same year, a series of regulatory and technological changes led to the weakening of their hold on the market, opening the way to the emergence of Data Communications. By the late 1970’s, many of the leading Data Communication firms will attempt to compete in the then emerging Networking market. A few years later, in the mid-1980’s, the Data Communication firms will be further challenged by the emergence of the Internetworking market.

The Networking market sector consists of...

firms that innovate products to interconnect computers and peripherals into a network. This need did not emerge until corporations both had, and wanted to share, multiple computers and peripherals. And while some need to interconnect mainframes from various vendors did exist, it was not until corporations began using minicomputers that the need for networking became widely embraced. At first the leading firms of Data Communications introduced a category of products called DataPBXs. These products represented incremental innovations of their multiplexer technologes and mimicked the architechture of the prevailing voice PBX switches. The technologies that would eventually dominate the market were an evolution, or diffusion, and refinement of packet switching technolohgies. This historical reconstruction follows the path from the first thinkings of Paul Baran and Donald Davies through a working Arpanet to the innovation of Ethernet led by Xerox PARC's Bob Metcalfe and the subsequent creation of international LAN standards.

The Internetworking market sector consists of...

the firms that innovate products to interconnect computer networks. This need did not emerge until corporations both had, and wanted to interconnect, computers and peripherals over multiple networks. Two driving forces were necessary: the growth in use of computer networks and the ability of corporations to interconnect network data taffic at high speeds over their own Wide Area Networks.

The emergence of the Internetworking market differed radically from Data Communications and Networking for it was driven primarily by the need to interconnect networks not computers. It, therefore, represents endogenous economic growth of computer communications.

The firms of both Data Communications and Networking had to respond to the emergence of internetworking - few did so sucessfully.