Social and Economic Control of Networks
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Abstract: BT started its current Future Comms Architecture Strategic
Research Programme in Mar 2002, based on earlier research into social
and market control of comms systems and research on pervasive computing
in the environment and society. Our style is to focus our efforts on the
critical pinch points, following through over many years by initiating
collective industry action to get solutions deployed.

We are now setting an agressive agenda at the Internet standards body
(the IETF) to fix Internet resource sharing. This started out from
clean-sheet economic thinking (e.g. Hal Varian), but has been engineered
down into an incrementally deployable new protocol using the last
available bit in the header of every IP packet. It will enable the
outcome of tensions in society and the economy to shape future industry
change. It will also suppress selfish and malicious use of resources.

We also decided to focus on fixing the considerable privacy issues in
pervasive computing systems. Again we started with generic research into
algorithms that would allow the tensions in society to determine the
balance between anonymity and traceablity. Recently we have been working
with a large group of players in the retail and distribution sectors to
deploy our solutions into RFID systems, as well as applying the research
to more general pervasive computing devices and systems.

Bob Briscoe
Chief Researcher
BT Networks Research Centre
July 2007