A network service provider (NSP) is a business or organization that sells bandwidth or network access by providing direct backbone access to the Internet and usually access to its network access points (NAPs). For such a reason, network service providers are sometimes referred to as backbone providers or internet providers.
Network service providers may consist of telecommunications companies, data carriers, wireless communications providers, Internet service providers, and cable television operators offering high-speed Internet access.
A few information technology companies are also emerging into the NSP market, notably IBM, EDS, CSC, Vanco and Atos Origin. This is due to the convergence of information technology and communications technology into one Information and Communications Technology (ICT).
Famous quotes containing the words network, service and/or provider:
“A culture may be conceived as a network of beliefs and purposes in which any string in the net pulls and is pulled by the others, thus perpetually changing the configuration of the whole. If the cultural element called morals takes on a new shape, we must ask what other strings have pulled it out of line. It cannot be one solitary string, nor even the strings nearby, for the network is three-dimensional at least.”
—Jacques Barzun (b. 1907)
“Let the good service of well-deservers be never rewarded with loss. Let their thanks be such as may encourage more strivers for the like.”
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—J. August Strindberg (1849–1912)