The meeting is halfway through, and the situation has become quite clear by now.
IBM, due to a combination of the right time and place, firmly controls most of the main lines of the NSF Network.
With these lines, IBM's ANS division almost effortlessly carries out its network business.
What's more, its customers are virtually ready-made—those universities, research institutions, and government agencies when choosing a network service provider.
Obviously, IBM is more likely to gain their favor, as these organizations need to consider their data security.
Thus, unknown private service providers find it hard to compete with IBM among these customer groups.
The arrogant IBM, with its unique advantages, haughtily refused to provide data transmission support for other network service providers.
The reason they could be so confident was not only because they owned hardware advantages, but also because of their vested interest relationship with the National Science Foundation office.
