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The future development of the internet is not only heavily dependent on its technological evolution, but also on business sustainability for the interconnection ecosystem the web relies on, where various players characterized by fairly different economic structures and interests are coexisting. Therefore, in this paper the authors aim to propose a methodological framework for developing innovative interconnection business models.

Starting from a comprehensive as‐is analysis including the selection of appropriate service scenarios, market activities are abstracted through an archetypization process. Based on that, a value network for the future marketplace is proposed and makes it possible to design a business model for carriers, before, as last step, both the value network configurations and the to‐be business model are evaluated.

The framework to assess the future internet ecosystem depicts the interconnections value network, shedding light on its key activities; it proposes the establishment of a new dynamic interconnection marketplace based on an emerging interconnection value network where traditional and original roles coexist; and it evaluates the introduction of sending party pays and bid‐and‐ask solutions for governing the marketplace and its business models.

The authors' approach addresses carriers, over‐the‐top providers and technology providers as well as end user groups, specifically aiming at fostering the evolution of the future internet by means of developing innovative value configurations and business model options with a substantial impact for a broad set of stakeholders on a global scale. Thus, the canvas of guidelines presented and discussed in this paper covers all stakeholders in the interconnection ecosystem and provides a solid starting point for upcoming implementations.

Argues regulations should establish a geographically comprehensive lattice of competing, independently owned, network interconnection points from which telephony operators are required to provide zero‐price telephony call termination. Concludes that intrusive regulation of intercompany interconnection and access, such as mandatory co‐location, loop unbundling and line sharing, should be avoided or rapidly phased out.

Telecommunications regulation in Hong Kong (China) is interesting as a case study of pro‐competitive regulation in a geographically small city of some 6.8 million people. It is also of particular interest because The Office of the Telecommunications Authority, the sector regulator, has for four years running (1999‐2002) been voted the best Asian regulator by readers of Telecom Asia. What policies were applied to warrant this sustained approval rating? This paper examines these policies and suggests further improvements.

This study aims to better inform environmental management at universities by applying and validating the policy integration processes theory through a case study of Manchester Metropolitan University.

Social network analyses were used to identify, differentiate and categorise working networks of individuals and departments and the interconnections between them.

In an organisation, networks can be developed and active at departmental level but not at individual level. High numbers of departments can be doing work related to sustainable development whilst having low and medium levels of interconnections between departments. Influence of stakeholders throughout the network suggests levels of sustainable development policy integration at individual and departmental.

New insights provide evidence for universities’ environmental managers of the need of developing and implementing strategies that involve individuals’ work between departments by providing incentives, supporting capacity building and staff empowerment.

This paper applied and validated the theory of policy integration processes, showing that work at individual level and between departments needs more attention.

The purpose of this paper is to design a efficient layout of Multistage interconnection network which has cost effective solution with high reliability and fault-tolerence capability. For parallel computation, various multistage interconnection networks (MINs) have been discussed hitherto in the literature, however, these networks always required further improvement in reliability and fault-tolerance capability. The fault-tolerance capability of the network can be achieved by increasing the number of disjoint paths as a result the reliability of the interconnection networks is also improved.

This proposed design is a modification of gamma interconnection network (GIN) and three disjoint path gamma interconnection network (3-DGIN). It has a total seven number of paths for all tag values which is uniform out of these seven paths, three paths are disjoint paths which increase the fault tolerance capability by two faults. Due to the presence of more paths than the GIN and 3-DGIN, this proposed design is more reliable.

In this study, a new design layout of a MIN has been proposed which provides three disjoint paths and uniformity in terms of an equal number of paths for all source-destination (S-D) pairs. The new layout contains fewer nodes as compared to GIN and 3-DGIN. This design provides a symmetrical structure, low cost, better terminal reliability and provides an equal number of paths for all tag values (|S-D|) when compared with existing MINs of this class.

A new design layout of MINs has been purposed and its two terminal reliability is calculated with the help of the reliability block diagram technique.

This paper aims to describe the effect of VoIP network architectures on the cost modelling of termination rates of VoIP services.

The study investigates and organises the arguments available in the technical and regulatory field related to VoIP networks and services in order to ascertain the possible impact of VoIP techniques, the provisioning of voice features in VoIP networks, and network interconnection issues on the cost of regulated VoIP services.

The information and analysis reveals how the provision of VoIP services is related to a number of issues that will have an effect on the cost of VoIP termination rates. In particular, the study analyses the impact on a cost model of the components of a VoIP network architecture, the usage factor of network elements, and the traffic volume generated by VoIP applications.

The issues described in the article can be used in elaborating a cost model for termination rates in VoIP networks. For the present study, no cost model was built, and therefore no quantitative estimations were made of the specific impact of every cost parameter on the termination rates.

The findings of this study can be used by policy makers, voice operators, and researchers.

Most studies of VoIP that are available in the literature address, on the one hand, the costs of corporate VoIP networks and, on the other, the regulation of VoIP services. This article, however, presents a comprehensive study of the most relevant features of VoIP network architectures that should be considered when determining regulated termination rates.

Different axiomatizations of network theory are considered. Kirchhoff networks are regarded with priority. Multipole and multiport networks are introduced as alternative variants. Additionally, Minty and Paynter networks, which are always dualizable are discussed briefly. The latter are special cases of Kirchhoff as well as of multiport networks. This paper seeks to discuss these issues.

The paper develops network theory inside of set theory, i.e. networks, multipoles, etc. are defined as objects of set theory. As such objects we use preferably ordered pairs, ordered triples, etc. The objects of network theory are then separated from the class of all these set theoretical objects by means of some defining conditions. These conditions are the axioms of our approaches to network theory.

It is shown that all presented variants of axiomatizations can be developed on the basis of a uniform representation for the time functions for voltages and currents. All these variants allow interdisciplinary applications of network theory and they can be generalized to multidimensional networks. An interesting byproduct is the relationship between multiport networks, networks in Belevitch normal form, Paynter networks, and bond graphs.

For applications it is essential that Kirchhoff and multipole networks are with respect to their modeling capability of equal value. But from the foundational point of view the multipole terminology has a number of crucial disadvantages compared with that based on Kirchhoff networks. This fact is important both for the conception of circuit simulation software packages and for the development of basic circuit theory curricula.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how firms manage earnings when firms are in interconnected networks, that is, when firms are interconnected to each other in a way that the survival of one firm is crucial to the survival of other firms connected to it.

The paper employs network typology to provide some insight on the earnings management behaviour of firms in regulated and unregulated networks or systems.

The author shows that firms in the inner core of interconnected networks are more likely to rely on income-smoothing behaviour as a preferred form of earnings management because it stabilises the firm’s link with other firms in the network. In regulated networks, the author proposes a negative relationship between a firm’s network centrality and the number of earnings management strategies the manager can adopt. Also, the author proposes a positive relationship between a firm’s network centrality and the propensity to smooth earnings or income when firms are concerned about their reputation or regulatory scrutiny.

This paper is a brief note on earnings management, and is the first study to provide a perspective on how earnings management can be explained using a network typology.

Multistage Interconnection Networks (MINs) are a class of network systems designed to improve communication in large‐scale parallel processing systems. These networks facilitate the communications to perform a single overall task in a parallel processing system consisting of a large number of processors that are working together. The purpose of this paper is to discuss two types of MINs: gamma networks and extra‐stage gamma networks. It is shown that a specific modification in the structure of a standard gamma network will add multiple paths from a specific source to a specific destination.

The terminal reliability of these networks are evaluated and analyzed in terms of the number of their paths connecting a source i, i=1, 2, … , N to any terminal. Numerical examples are also given to demonstrate each network's performance.

In this paper, terminal reliability as a function of the reliability of a switching element of MINs is analyzed. Terminal reliability, generally used as a measure of robustness of a MIN, is the probability of existence of at least one fault free path between a designated pair of input (s) and output (t) terminals. The fault‐tolerance and terminal reliability capabilities as well as the reliability of these networks are evaluated. It is observed that the additional stage provides more redundant paths in the networks. Therefore, an additional stage leads to extra paths and improves the system's fault tolerance. It has been shown that in a Shuffle‐Exchange Network Systems, an addition of an extra stage leads to higher terminal reliability of that network. However, the additional stage does not necessarily improve the terminal reliability of the gamma network. The additional stage could add to the switch complexity and increase the probability of a path failure as well. Therefore, the extra‐stage gamma network has multiple paths in every source‐destination pair including the case when the tag value is 0, that is, when (s=t).

Other authors have not done this kind of research analysis.

The purpose of the paper is to explore the remaining aspects of telecommunications service that might require continued economic and technical regulation even after competition is present to the maximum extent feasible. The paper further explores the regulatory institutions and practices that will best accomplish this required regulation.

The paper evaluates the traditional choices between a sector‐specific regulator and a competition authority, as well as ex post and ex ante regulation. In addition, the paper evaluates less traditional methods of regulation including laws of general application, such as consumer protection laws, alternative dispute resolution mechanisms, and self‐regulation. The characteristics of each of these means of regulation are identified, and, following a set of principles, the regulatory institutions and practices are matched to the areas of telecommunications requiring regulation.

The paper identifies five areas of telecommunications that will likely require continuing regulation and matches a regulatory institution or practice to each of the five areas of regulation. These five areas are retail regulation of local services in rural and remote areas with insufficient competition for forbearance, interconnection of competing networks and essential facilities, duty to serve (carrier of last resort and obligation to serve), subsidies for high‐cost or low‐income customers, and social regulation such as emergency service and message relay obligations.

Previous studies have not focused on the need for continuing regulation after competition develops to the maximum extent feasible. Also, studies typically consider the limited framework of a sector‐specific regulator or a competition authority and do not consider the other regulatory options or institutions available.