Value‐added services Available to Purchase

Value‐added is an economist's term meaning that the service offered will have additional value to the user compared with more basic telecommunications (or other) services. Within the telecommunications sector, there has been considerable discussion in recent years as to what constitutes a value‐added service. This argument has now been initially resolved with the publication of a discussion document by the DTI, Value‐added and data services, which defines anything beyond the basic telephone, telex and leased line services as being of a value‐added nature. Thus a telephone answering service adds value, as does an ‘electronic mail’ service linking dissimilar data terminals, perhaps on different continents. The range of service possibilities is very wide and currently seems to be limited only by entrepreneurs' abilities to define commercially attractive presentations of telecommunications services, computers and operators.