Will the future see a two-tier internet?

The telecoms meltdown that has hit service providers such as WorldCom and KPNQwest could see the development of a two-tier internet.

Duncan Black, corporate solutions strategies director at Cable & Wireless, said: "The single approach to the internet will disappear. You will see a basic internet service, which just provides connectivity, and a business quality internet."

The main customers for top-tier internet services will be multinational corporations, which are looking for high-availability services such as virtual private networks (VPNs) with quality of service guarantees - which Black sees as a key growth market over the next five years.

Consumers are also likely to see an increasing range of internet access products, according to Black - from a simple internet access-only product with no quality of service guarantees to more advanced and more expensive services which support, for example, advanced multimedia and video capabilities.

"The challenge of supporting streaming video over the public internet is not trivial," said Black, so ISPs may look to introduce specialised premium internet subscriptions with improved support for multimedia applications.

BT has already moved to provide some differentiated internet access products, with the launch of its DSL-without-an-ISP product described by CEO Ben Verwaayen as "a dialtone for the internet".

Black expects to see around five to seven major international ISPs survive the current industry meltdown. Those ISPs, who will have large networks with five or more globally distributed points of presence, will have 'private peering' arrangements with each other.

These private peering arrangements effectively allow ISPs to route traffic onto each others networks freely and without payment - combining their resources to form a larger and more stable IP network.

These seven companies' combined networks will then provide the backbone for the business-quality internet.

Other smaller telcos such as BT Ignite don't have the scale or global reach to be attractive partners for private peering. They will buy access to the network on a 'chargeable peering' basis - similar to the chargeable peering deal BT currently has with Cable & Wireless.

The network of UUNet, a division of troubled telco WorldCom, which filed for bankruptcy this week, is likely to be one of the big players: "Though under whose name and whose ownership, who knows," Black said. "Current names and ownership may not survive."

However, if UUNet were to go down, then the overall performance of the internet would be affected, says Black.

"If you went to the States and removed UUNet then that would have an effect - you would start to see delays, packet loss and even loss of connectivity."