We envision that telecom companies and internet service providers (ISPs)
will begin to play an increasingly active role in delivering content to end
users. With the emergence of technologies like Voice-over IP (VoIP), telecom
companies who traditionally relied on profits made from telephony might in-
stead focus on delivering digital content over the internet to their end users.
It is not hard to imagine service-level agreements (SLAs) between content
providers and ISPs that will allow them to exploit caching to serve home
users with latencies less than their reaction times (this is already happen-
ing, debates behind net-neutrality notwithstanding). By involving telecom
companies and ISPs in content delivery, we begin to break away from the
traditional model of a one-to-one connection and begin to formulate a hier-
archical tree-like content distribution system, which is not only a lot more
scalable but also profitable, which makes it a feasible model for both ISPs
and end users.