Governing the "New Economy": a 3-Phase Historical Model of Cumulative Gales of Creative Destruction of the United Kingdom Internet Service Providers' Market

This article documents the industrial dynamics and the innovation processes inherent in the fast emerging dial-up Internet access segment of the new telecommunication sector in the United Kingdom for the period between 1992 - 2002. It shows that evolving market structures and related products and service innovation in the wholesale and retail branches of the UK Internet Service Providers' market have to be understood in the context of: a) an entrepreneurial thrust that seizes the advantage of a glut of finance accumulated from the privatization of the utilities; b) the evolution of the relationship between the UK voice and data transfer markets after the privatization of British Telecommunications and the strategic development of its 'intelligent network'; c) the related network technologies and services available for deployment at the start of the implementation of the Internet as a mass infrastructure; d) BT's quasi-monopoly in call origination and finally e) the wider evolutionary industrial dynamics, i.e. a cumulative process of conjectures and feedback loops of market power, strategic management and transformation in corporate and institutional governance following the market's expansion and the transition from metered to unmetered dial up Internet access.