040.62 Europe commercial nets by Juha Heinanen <Juha.Heinanen@funet.fi>
In this first report, an overview is given on present European commercial providers of Internet services.
Traditionally commercial customers needing Internet services in Europe have turned to EUnet, which is a not-for-profit network related to EurOpen association. The branch of EUNET offering IP level services is called InterEUnet and currently it has points of presense in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, the Nordic Countries, Switzerland, and United Kingdom. Connectivity to the U.S is via Alternet.
Another network providing European wide Internet services is InfoLAN. InfoLAN is owned by InfoNet which is a Los Angeles based international network operator. InfoLAN has IP access nodes in Belgium, France, Finland, Germany, Sweden, and United Kingdom and links from Europe to the U.S. Customers subscribe to InfoLAN usually because of their internal interconnection needs and Internet connectivity is offered as an added value to qualified users.
Besides these international service provides, there exists national commercial internet networks in Finland and Sweden, where open competition has encouraged fulfilling of advanced user needs.
In Finland, DataNet, which is run by the state owned telecom company, and LANLINK, which is managed by a consortium of local telecom companies, offer LAN interconnectivity supporting (among others) the TCP/IP protocol suite. Qualified DataNet customers can get Internet Access either via NORDUnet or via DataNet's InfoLAN connection.
In Sweden, there exists similarly two competing IP providers: SWIPNET, which is an IP service of a privately owned telecom operator Tele2, and TIPNET, which is run by the state owned PTT. Both of these networks can currently both closed and open IP connectivity and Internet access to qualified customers via NORDUnet.
