We all know that the Internet is a phenomenon without precedent in the history of human civilisation. I write it this way as many people do not fully appreciate the fundamental changes to our society that continued development of Internet and Internet based applications will have. The first milestone of Internet development was to make the advanced technology easy to use and thus available to more people than a small group of world class scientists. The development of the World Wide Web was this breakthrough. The second milestone was to make it easy and low cost to access. The advent of de-regulation around the world for local telecommunications companies has made this possible. The UK has lead the world with "free" access to the Internet, and others are following close behind. In the first few days of "Free" service an additional 1,250,000 people in the UK became Internet Users The fact is that today at any one time there are more than 50 million people using the Internet makes it the biggest market place the civilized world has ever seen. No commercial operation can ignore a market place that makes Television look insignificant: that allows direct interaction with the customer. that allows direct marketing and market research to take place without any delay. that allows services to be specified, ordered, delivered and paid for on a global basis to a global customer base 24 hours a day. at a cost that is a fraction of todays traditional product delivery and marketing costs. The Internet has now broken through the critical audience mass barrier, it will continue to expand at a breathtaking pace until the market saturates. The key drivers will be the desire of the worlds industries to do more commerce over the Internet, their desire to collaborate with more people to devise and deliver more projects / products more quickly and the needs of the Customer to have direct access to the best products at the best price, and the needs of national governments to have their domestic industries able to compete freely in the biggest market the world has ever seen. We at Trade Partners have worked with National Government and major Companies to pioneer the application of Internet technologies. If you would like us to assist YOU to compete and win in this exciting new marketplace, then please email us or call +44 1904 562800