the networks are built in layers, from the physical layer, which is concerned with the mechanical, electrical and optical, and functional and procedural means for managing network connections to the data, network, and transport layers, which are concerned with transferring data, routing data across networks between addresses, and ensuring end-to-end
In this era of globalization, many companies are multinational, with operations—including R&D—conducted across the globe. For example, IBM, HP, Qualcomm, and Microsoft all have research facilities in other countries, and many European and Asian companies have research laboratories in the United States. Increasing numbers of businesses compete globally. Every company and every industry must assess the segments and niches in which it operates to remain globally competitive.
Both Asian and European nations are continuing to pursue strategies that exploit perceived U.S. weakness in telecommunications and telecommunications research as a way of improving their competitiveness in telecommunications, as well as in information technology more broadly. Leapfrogging the United States in telecommunications has, in the opinion of the committee, been an explicit and stated strategy for a number of Asian (in broadband and wireless) and European (in wireless) nations for the past decade, with notable success. These efforts have aimed to stimulate the rapid penetration of physical-layer technologies for residential access (broadband access, especially in Asia) and wireless and mobile access (cellular networks, especially in Europe).
The Bell System ended in 1983. Divestiture resulted in the separation of the local Bell System operating companies (which provided local telephone service to large regions of the United States) from the long-distance parts of the network (known as long-lines communications) and ended the license fee arrangement through which the regional operating companies supported Bell Labs. At the time of the separation, Western Electric (the equipment manufacturing part of the Bell System) was assigned to the part of the company that would be called AT&T), along with most of the research and development resources of Bell Labs. The regional Bell operating companies (RBOCs), the providers of local phone service, formed an R&D consortium called Bellcore (Bell Communications Research, later renamed Telcordia Technologies) and agreed to fund Bellcore to do the majority of the R&D needed to support them— at least for an initial period on the order of 5 to 7 years. Subsequently the RBOCs sold Bellcore to SAIC, causing the new lab to seek support outside the RBOCs and subsequently make radical changes in the scope and direction of its research program.
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