Open Communication

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Open Communication, or Open Access to Communication resources, is a special case of Open Access, a concept which is used in many contexts, including access to immaterial as well as physical assets, such as intellectual property rights and physical communication links.

Open Access in the context of Communication (Open Communication) means that anyone, on equal conditions with a transparent relation between cost and pricing, can get access to and share communication resources on one level to provide value added services on another level in a layered communication system architecture.

The concept of Open Access to Communication Resources is central in the ongoing transformation of the communication market from a "vertically integrated" market with a few operators owning and operating everything between the physical medium and the end-user, to an "open horizontal market" with an abundance of actors operating on different levels and providing value added services on top of each other.

Open Access is also a broad approach to policy and regulatory issues that starts from the question: what do we want to bring about outside of purely industry sector concerns? It places an emphasis on: on empowering citizens; encouraging local innovation, economic growth and investment; and getting the best from public and private sector contributions. It is not simply about making micro-adjustments to the technical rules of the policy and regulatory framework but seeking to produce fundamental changes in the outcomes that can be delivered through it.

The interesting layers in a data communication system architecture for terrestrial Optical Fibre Communication include:

Physical passive infrastructure: right of way, ducts, fibre cables, fibre core terminated in an optical distribution frame with patch panels. Actors on this level includes real estate owners, both public and private, other infrasructure actors, such as power utility companies, railway companies, pipeline companies (water, gas, oil, etc). Several fibre owners lease dark fibre to operators or end-users.

Optical transmission including wavelength division and multiplexing (WDM) providing several communication channels in the same fibre core. Fibre owners sometimes provide wavelengths rather than dark fibre, sometimes both.

Link level: includes a variety of link level services for LAN, MAN and WAN implemented by switches, etc. Operators on this level include "service operator-neutral" network operators.

Network level (IP), including unicast, multicast, anycast. Operators on this level include Internet Service Providers (ISPs)

End-to-end transport level, including connection-oriented (TCP) and datagram (UDP). Commercial services on this level are rare.

Services including session, presentation and application functionality, such as email (SMTP, POP, IMAP), web services (HTTP), file transfer (FTP), terminal access (TELNET), etc. Typical commercial actors on this level include Internet Cafes.